On conjugacy growth of linear groups

We investigate the conjugacy growth of finitely generated linear groups. We show that finitely generated non-virtually-solvable subgroups of GL_d have uniform exponential conjugacy growth and in fact that the number of distinct polynomials arising as characteristic polynomials of the elements of the ball of radius n for the word metric has exponential growth rate bounded away from 0 in terms of the dimension d only.Comment: 21 page

Contractions and expansion

Let A be a finite set of reals and let K >= 1 be a real number. Suppose that for each a in A we are given an injective map f_a : A -> R which fixes a and contracts other points towards it in the sense that |a - f_a(x)| <= |a - x|/K for all x in A, and such that f_a(x) always lies between a and x. Then the union of the f_a(A) has cardinality >= K|A|/10 - O_K(1). An immediate consequence of this is the estimate |A + K.A| >= K|A|/10 - O_K(1), which is a slightly weakened version of a result of Bukh.Comment: 6 pages, submitted to special volume of EJC in honour of Yahya Hamidoun

Approximate groups, I: the torsion-free nilpotent case

We describe the structure of ``K-approximate subgroups'' of torsion-free nilpotent groups, paying particular attention to Lie groups. Three other works, by Fisher-Katz-Peng, Sanders and Tao, have appeared which independently address related issues. We comment briefly on some of the connections between these papers.Comment: 23 page

Projective geometries arising from Elekes-Szab\'o problems

We generalise the Elekes-Szab\'o theorem to arbitrary arity and dimension and characterise the complex algebraic varieties without power saving. The characterisation involves certain algebraic subgroups of commutative algebraic groups endowed with an extra structure arising from a skew field of endomorphisms. We also extend the Erd\H{o}s-Szemer\'edi sum-product phenomenon to elliptic curves. Our approach is based on Hrushovski's framework of pseudo-finite dimensions and the abelian group configuration theorem.Comment: 48 pages. Minor improvements in presentation. To appear in ASEN

Approximate groups, II: the solvable linear case

We describe the structure of "K-approximate subgroups'' of solvable subgroups of GL_n(C), showing that they have a large nilpotent piece. By combining this with the main result of our recent paper on approximate subgroups of torsion-free nilpotent groups, we show that such approximate subgroups are efficiently controlled by nilpotent progressions.Comment: 10 page