We discuss a problem posed by Gersten: Is every automatic group which does not contain Z+Z subgroup, hyperbolic? To study this question, we define the notion of n-tracks of length n, which is a structure like Z+Z, and prove its existence in the non-hyperbolic automatic groups with mild conditions. As an application, we show that if a group acts effectively, cellularly, properly discontinuously and cocompactly on a CAT(0) cube complex and its quotient is weakly special, then the above question is answered affirmatively.
We study the class of finite groups $G$ satisfying $Phi (G/N)= Phi(G)N/N$ for all normal subgroups $N$ of $G$. As a consequence of our main results we extend and amplify a theorem of Doerk concerning this class from the soluble universe to all finite groups and answer in the affirmative a long-standing question of Christensen whether the class of finite groups which possess complements for each of their normal subgroups is subnormally closed.
A finitely generated subgroup H of a torsion-free hyperbolic group G is called immutable if there are only finitely many conjugacy classes of injections of H into G. We show that there is no uniform algorithm to recognize immutability, answering a uniform version of a question asked by the authors.
A group $G$ is said to be $frac{3}{2}$-generated if every nontrivial element belongs to a generating pair. It is easy to see that if $G$ has this property then every proper quotient of $G$ is cyclic. In this paper we prove that the converse is true for finite groups, which settles a conjecture of Breuer, Guralnick and Kantor from 2008. In fact, we prove a much stronger result, which solves a problem posed by Brenner and Wiegold in 1975. Namely, if $G$ is a finite group and every proper quotient of $G$ is cyclic, then for any pair of nontrivial elements $x_1,x_2 in G$, there exists $y in G$ such that $G = langle x_1, y rangle = langle x_2, y rangle$. In other words, $s(G) geqslant 2$, where $s(G)$ is the spread of $G$. Moreover, if $u(G)$ denotes the more restrictive uniform spread of $G$, then we can completely characterise the finite groups $G$ with $u(G) = 0$ and $u(G)=1$. To prove these results, we first establish a reduction to almost simple groups. For simple groups, the result was proved by Guralnick and Kantor in 2000 using probabilistic methods and since then the almost simple groups have been the subject of several papers. By combining our reduction theorem and this earlier work, it remains to handle the groups whose socles are exceptional groups of Lie type and this is the case we treat in this paper.
We describe elementary examples of finitely presented sofic groups which are not residually amenable (and thus not initially subamenable or LEA, for short). We ask if an amalgam of two amenable groups over a finite subgroup is residually amenable and answer this positively for some special cases, including countable locally finite groups, residually nilpotent groups and others.