Commutators and Squares in Free Nilpotent Groups

In a free group no nontrivial commutator is a square. And in the free group F2=F(x1,x2) freely generated by x1,x2 the commutator [x1,x2] is never the product of two squares in F2, although it is always the product of three squares. Let F2,3=〈x1,x2〉 be a free nilpotent group of rank 2 and class 3 freely generated by x1,x2. We prove that in F2,3=〈x1,x2〉, it is possible to write certain commutators as a square. We denote by Sq(γ) the minimal number of squares which is required to write γ as a product of squares in group G. And we define Sq(G)=sup{Sq(γ);γ∈G′}. We discuss the question of when the square length of a given commutator of F2,3 is equal to 1 or 2 or 3. The precise formulas for expressing any commutator of F2,3 as the minimal number of squares are given. Finally as an application of these results we prove that Sq(F′2,3)=3

On the cohomology of Galois groups determined by Witt rings

Let F denote a field of characteristic different from two. In this paper we describe the mod 2 cohomology of a Galois group which is determined by the Witt ring WF

Nilpotent deformations of N=2 superspace

We investigate deformations of four-dimensional N=(1,1) euclidean superspace induced by nonanticommuting fermionic coordinates. We essentially use the harmonic superspace approach and consider nilpotent bi-differential Poisson operators only. One variant of such deformations (termed chiral nilpotent) directly generalizes the recently studied chiral deformation of N=(1/2,1/2) superspace. It preserves chirality and harmonic analyticity but generically breaks N=(1,1) to N=(1,0) supersymmetry. Yet, for degenerate choices of the constant deformation matrix N=(1,1/2) supersymmetry can be retained, i.e. a fraction of 3/4. An alternative version (termed analytic nilpotent) imposes minimal nonanticommutativity on the analytic coordinates of harmonic superspace. It does not affect the analytic subspace and respects all supersymmetries, at the expense of chirality however. For a chiral nilpotent deformation, we present non(anti)commutative euclidean analogs of N=2 Maxwell and hypermultiplet off-shell actions.Comment: 1+16 pages; v2: discussion of (pseudo)conjugations extended, version to appear in JHE

Irrationality of generic quotient varieties via Bogomolov multipliers

The Bogomolov multiplier of a group is the unramified Brauer group associated to the quotient variety of a faithful representation of the group. This object is an obstruction for the quotient variety to be stably rational. The purpose of this paper is to study these multipliers associated to nilpotent pro-$p$ groups by transporting them to their associated Lie algebras. Special focus is set on the case of $p$-adic Lie groups of nilpotency class $2$, where we analyse the moduli space. This is then applied to give information on asymptotic behaviour of multipliers of finite images of such groups of exponent $p$. We show that with fixed $n$ and increasing $p$, a positive proportion of these groups of order $p^n$ have trivial multipliers. On the other hand, we show that by fixing $p$ and increasing $n$, log-generic groups of order $p^n$ have non-trivial multipliers. Whence quotient varieties of faithful representations of log-generic $p$-groups are not stably rational. Applications in non-commutative Iwasawa theory are developed.Comment: 34 pages; improved expositio