Turbulence, amalgamation and generic automorphisms of homogeneous structures

We study topological properties of conjugacy classes in Polish groups, with emphasis on automorphism groups of homogeneous countable structures. We first consider the existence of dense conjugacy classes (the topological Rokhlin property). We then characterize when an automorphism group admits a comeager conjugacy class (answering a question of Truss) and apply this to show that the homeomorphism group of the Cantor space has a comeager conjugacy class (answering a question of Akin-Hurley-Kennedy). Finally, we study Polish groups that admit comeager conjugacy classes in any dimension (in which case the groups are said to admit ample generics). We show that Polish groups with ample generics have the small index property (generalizing results of Hodges-Hodkinson-Lascar-Shelah) and arbitrary homomorphisms from such groups into separable groups are automatically continuous. Moreover, in the case of oligomorphic permutation groups, they have uncountable cofinality and the Bergman property. These results in particular apply to automorphism groups of many $\omega$-stable, $\aleph_0$-categorical structures and of the random graph. In this connection, we also show that the infinite symmetric group $S_\infty$ has a unique non-trivial separable group topology. For several interesting groups we also establish Serre's properties (FH) and (FA)

Selective covering properties of product spaces

We study the preservation of selective covering properties, including classic ones introduced by Menger, Hurewicz, Rothberger, Gerlits and Nagy, and others, under products with some major families of concentrated sets of reals. Our methods include the projection method introduced by the authors in an earlier work, as well as several new methods. Some special consequences of our main results are (definitions provided in the paper): \be \item Every product of a concentrated space with a Hurewicz \sone(\Ga,\Op) space satisfies \sone(\Ga,\Op). On the other hand, assuming \CH{}, for each Sierpi\'nski set $S$ there is a Luzin set $L$ such that L\x S can be mapped onto the real line by a Borel function. \item Assuming Semifilter Trichotomy, every concentrated space is productively Menger and productively Rothberger. \item Every scale set is productively Hurewicz, productively Menger, productively Scheepers, and productively Gerlits--Nagy. \item Assuming \fd=\aleph_1, every productively Lindel\"of space is productively Hurewicz, productively Menger, and productively Scheepers. \ee A notorious open problem asks whether the additivity of Rothberger's property may be strictly greater than \add(\cN), the additivity of the ideal of Lebesgue-null sets of reals. We obtain a positive answer, modulo the consistency of Semifilter Trichotomy with \add(\cN)<\cov(\cM). Our results improve upon and unify a number of results, established earlier by many authors.Comment: Submitted for publicatio