It is proved that finite nonabelian simple groups $S$ with $max pi(S)=37$ are uniquely determined by their order and degree pattern in the class of all finite groups.
The degree pattern of a finite group is the degree sequence of its prime graph in ascending order of vertices. We say that the problem of OD-characterization is solved for a finite group if we determine the number of pairwise nonisomorphic finite gro
ups with the same order and degree pattern as the group under consideration. In this article the problem of OD-characterization is solved for some simple unitary groups. It was shown, in particular, that the simple unitary groups $U_3(q)$ and $U_4(q)$ are OD-characterizable, where $q$ is a prime power $<10^2$.
This is an addendum to arXiv: 0810.5376. We show, using our methods and an auxiliary result of Bestvina-Bromberg-Fujiwara, that a finitely generated group with infinitely many pairwise non-conjugate homomorphisms to a mapping class group virtually ac
ts non-trivially on an $R$-tree, and, if it is finitely presented, it virtually acts non-trivially on a simplicial tree
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 si
mple 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 group of almost automorphisms of a d-regular tree does not admit lattices. As far as we know this is the first such example among (compactly generated) simple locally compact groups.
Let $G$ be a simple algebraic group over an algebraically closed field and let $X$ be an irreducible subvariety of $G^r$ with $r geqslant 2$. In this paper, we consider the general problem of determining if there exists a tuple $(x_1, ldots, x_r) in
X$ such that $langle x_1, ldots, x_r rangle$ is Zariski dense in $G$. We are primarily interested in the case where $X = C_1 times cdots times C_r$ and each $C_i$ is a conjugacy class of $G$ comprising elements of prime order modulo the center of $G$. In this setting, our main theorem gives a complete solution to the problem when $G$ is a symplectic or orthogonal group. By combining our results with earlier work on linear and exceptional groups, this gives a complete solution for all simple algebraic groups. We also present several applications. For example, we use our main theorem to show that many faithful representations of symplectic and orthogonal groups are generically free. We also establish new asymptotic results on the probabilistic generation of finite simple groups by pairs of prime order elements, completing a line of research initiated by Liebeck and Shalev over 25 years ago.