No Arabic abstract
Let $q$ be a prime power and let $G$ be an absolutely irreducible subgroup of $GL_d(F)$, where $F$ is a finite field of the same characteristic as $F_q$, the field of $q$ elements. Assume that $G cong G(q)$, a quasisimple group of exceptional Lie type over $F_q$ which is neither a Suzuki nor a Ree group. We present a Las Vegas algorithm that constructs an isomorphism from $G$ to the standard copy of $G(q)$. If $G otcong {}^3 D_4(q)$ with $q$ even, then the algorithm runs in polynomial time, subject to the existence of a discrete log oracle.
In this paper we determine the torsion free rank of the group of endotrivial modules for any finite group of Lie type, in both defining and non-defining characteristic. On our way to proving this, we classify the maximal rank $2$ elementary abelian $ell$-subgroups in any finite group of Lie type, for any prime $ell$, which may be of independent interest.
For a finite group $G$, let $mathrm{diam}(G)$ denote the maximum diameter of a connected Cayley graph of $G$. A well-known conjecture of Babai states that $mathrm{diam}(G)$ is bounded by ${(log_{2} |G|)}^{O(1)}$ in case $G$ is a non-abelian finite simple group. Let $G$ be a finite simple group of Lie type of Lie rank $n$ over the field $F_{q}$. Babais conjecture has been verified in case $n$ is bounded, but it is wide open in case $n$ is unbounded. Recently, Biswas and Yang proved that $mathrm{diam}(G)$ is bounded by $q^{O( n {(log_{2}n + log_{2}q)}^{3})}$. We show that in fact $mathrm{diam}(G) < q^{O(n {(log_{2}n)}^{2})}$ holds. Note that our bound is significantly smaller than the order of $G$ for $n$ large, even if $q$ is large. As an application, we show that more generally $mathrm{diam}(H) < q^{O( n {(log_{2}n)}^{2})}$ holds for any subgroup $H$ of $mathrm{GL}(V)$, where $V$ is a vector space of dimension $n$ defined over the field $F_q$.
We show that the mod $ell$ cohomology of any finite group of Lie type in characteristic $p$ different from $ell$ admits the structure of a module over the mod $ell$ cohomology of the free loop space of the classifying space $BG$ of the corresponding compact Lie group $G$, via ring and module structures constructed from string topology, a la Chas-Sullivan. If a certain fundamental class in the homology of the finite group of Lie type is non-trivial, then this module structure becomes free of rank one, and provides a structured isomorphism between the two cohomology rings equipped with the cup product, up to a filtration. We verify the nontriviality of the fundamental class in a range of cases, including all simply connected untwisted classical groups over the field of $q$ elements, with $q$ congruent to 1 mod $ell$. We also show how to deal with twistings and get rid of the congruence condition by replacing $BG$ by a certain $ell$-compact fixed point group depending on the order of $q$ mod $ell$, without changing the finite group. With this modification, we know of no examples where the fundamental class is trivial, raising the possibility of a general structural answer to an open question of Tezuka, who speculated about the existence of an isomorphism between the two cohomology rings.
We prove a general dichotomy theorem for groups of finite Morley rank with solvable local subgroups and of Prufer p-rank at least 2, leading either to some p-strong embedding, or to the Prufer p-rank being exactly 2.
Let $G$ be a simple algebraic group over an algebraically closed field $k$ and let $C_1, ldots, C_t$ be non-central conjugacy classes in $G$. In this paper, we consider the problem of determining whether there exist $g_i in C_i$ such that $langle g_1, ldots, g_t rangle$ is Zariski dense in $G$. First we establish a general result, which shows that if $Omega$ is an irreducible subvariety of $G^t$, then the set of tuples in $Omega$ generating a dense subgroup of $G$ is either empty or dense in $Omega$. In the special case $Omega = C_1 times cdots times C_t$, by considering the dimensions of fixed point spaces, we prove that this set is dense when $G$ is an exceptional algebraic group and $t geqslant 5$, assuming $k$ is not algebraic over a finite field. In fact, for $G=G_2$ we only need $t geqslant 4$ and both of these bounds are best possible. As an application, we show that many faithful representations of exceptional algebraic groups are generically free. We also establish new results on the topological generation of exceptional groups in the special case $t=2$, which have applications to random generation of finite exceptional groups of Lie type. In particular, we prove a conjecture of Liebeck and Shalev on the random $(r,s)$-generation of exceptional groups.