On strongly just infinite profinite branch groups

For profinite branch groups, we first demonstrate the equivalence of the Bergman property, uncountable cofinality, Cayley boundedness, the countable index property, and the condition that every non-trivial normal subgroup is open; compact groups enjoying the last condition are called strongly just infinite. For strongly just infinite profinite branch groups with mild additional assumptions, we verify the invariant automatic continuity property and the locally compact automatic continuity property. Examples are then presented, including the profinite completion of the first Grigorchuk group. As an application, we show that many Burger-Mozes universal simple groups enjoy several automatic continuity properties.Comment: Typos and a minor error correcte

On conjugacy separability of fibre products

In this paper we study conjugacy separability of subdirect products of two free (or hyperbolic) groups. We establish necessary and sufficient criteria and apply them to fibre products to produce a finitely presented group $G_1$ in which all finite index subgroups are conjugacy separable, but which has an index $2$ overgroup that is not conjugacy separable. Conversely, we construct a finitely presented group $G_2$ which has a non-conjugacy separable subgroup of index $2$ such that every finite index normal overgroup of $G_2$ is conjugacy separable. The normality of the overgroup is essential in the last example, as such a group $G_2$ will always posses an index $3$ overgroup that is not conjugacy separable. Finally, we characterize $p$-conjugacy separable subdirect products of two free groups, where $p$ is a prime. We show that fibre products provide a natural correspondence between residually finite $p$-groups and $p$-conjugacy separable subdirect products of two non-abelian free groups. As a consequence, we deduce that the open question about the existence of an infinite finitely presented residually finite $p$-group is equivalent to the question about the existence of a finitely generated $p$-conjugacy separable full subdirect product of infinite index in the direct product of two free groups.Comment: v2: 38 pages; this is the version accepted for publicatio

Equivariant properties of symmetric products

The filtration on the infinite symmetric product of spheres by the number of factors provides a sequence of spectra between the sphere spectrum and the integral Eilenberg-Mac Lane spectrum. This filtration has received a lot of attention and the subquotients are interesting stable homotopy types. While the symmetric product filtration has been a major focus of research since the 1980s, essentially nothing was known when one adds group actions into the picture. We investigate the equivariant stable homotopy types, for compact Lie groups, obtained from this filtration of infinite symmetric products of representation spheres. The situation differs from the non-equivariant case, for example the subquotients of the filtration are no longer rationally trivial and on the zeroth equivariant homotopy groups an interesting filtration of the augmentation ideals of the Burnside rings arises. Our method is by global homotopy theory, i.e., we study the simultaneous behavior for all compact Lie groups at once.Comment: 33 page

On semilinear representations of the infinite symmetric group

In this note the smooth (i.e. with open stabilizers) linear and {\sl semilinear} representations of certain permutation groups (such as infinite symmetric group or automorphism group of an infinite-dimensional vector space over a finite field) are studied. Many results here are well-known to the experts, at least in the case of {\sl linear representations} of symmetric group. The presented results suggest, in particular, that an analogue of Hilbert's Theorem 90 should hold: in the case of faithful action of the group on the base field the irreducible smooth semilinear representations are one-dimensional (and trivial in appropriate sense).Comment: 19 pages, significant changes; an analogue of Hilbert's Theorem 90 for infinite symmetric groups moved to arXiv:1508.0226

Finitely presented wreath products and double coset decompositions

We characterize which permutational wreath products W^(X)\rtimes G are finitely presented. This occurs if and only if G and W are finitely presented, G acts on X with finitely generated stabilizers, and with finitely many orbits on the cartesian square X^2. On the one hand, this extends a result of G. Baumslag about standard wreath products; on the other hand, this provides nontrivial examples of finitely presented groups. For instance, we obtain two quasi-isometric finitely presented groups, one of which is torsion-free and the other has an infinite torsion subgroup. Motivated by the characterization above, we discuss the following question: which finitely generated groups can have a finitely generated subgroup with finitely many double cosets? The discussion involves properties related to the structure of maximal subgroups, and to the profinite topology.Comment: 21 pages; no figure. To appear in Geom. Dedicat

On sequences of finitely generated discrete groups

We consider sequences of finitely generated discrete subgroups Gamma_i=rho_i(Gamma) of a rank 1 Lie group G, where the representations rho_i are not necessarily faithful. We show that, for algebraically convergent sequences (Gamma_i), unless Gamma_i's are (eventually) elementary or contain normal finite subgroups of arbitrarily high order, their algebraic limit is a discrete nonelementary subgroup of G. In the case of divergent sequences (Gamma_i) we show that the limiting action on a real tree T satisfies certain semistability condition, which generalizes the notion of stability introduced by Rips. We then verify that the group Gamma splits as an amalgam or HNN extension of finitely generated groups, so that the edge group has an amenable image in the isometry group of T.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figur