Bulitko's Lemma for acylindrical splittings

We generalize Bulitko's Lemma to equations over (or homomorphisms into) groups that have $\kappa$-acylindrical splittings.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures. The introduction has been modified to reflect the fact that the result of this paper is a key component of the author's track finding algorithm. There was also a slight change to the formulation of the main theore

A classification of primitive permutation groups with finite stabilizers

We classify all infinite primitive permutation groups possessing a finite point stabilizer, thus extending the seminal Aschbacher-O'Nan-Scott Theorem to all primitive permutation groups with finite point stabilizers.Comment: Accepted in J. Algebra. Various changes, some due to the author, some due to suggestions from readers and others due to the comments of anonymous referee

Amenable actions, free products and a fixed point property

We investigate the class of groups admitting an action on a set with an invariant mean. It turns out that many free products admit such an action. We give a complete characterisation of such free products in terms of a strong fixed point property.Comment: 12 page

On subgroups of minimal topological groups

A topological group is minimal if it does not admit a strictly coarser Hausdorff group topology. The Roelcke uniformity (or lower uniformity) on a topological group is the greatest lower bound of the left and right uniformities. A group is Roelcke-precompact if it is precompact with respect to the Roelcke uniformity. Many naturally arising non-Abelian topological groups are Roelcke-precompact and hence have a natural compactification. We use such compactifications to prove that some groups of isometries are minimal. In particular, if U_1 is the Urysohn universal metric space of diameter 1, the group Iso(U_1) of all self-isometries of U_1 is Roelcke-precompact, topologically simple and minimal. We also show that every topological group is a subgroup of a minimal topologically simple Roelcke-precompact group of the form Iso(M), where M is an appropriate non-separable version of the Urysohn space.Comment: To appear in Topology and its Applications. 39 page

Quantum symmetric Kac-Moody pairs

The present paper develops a general theory of quantum group analogs of symmetric pairs for involutive automorphism of the second kind of symmetrizable Kac-Moody algebras. The resulting quantum symmetric pairs are right coideal subalgebras of quantized enveloping algebras. They give rise to triangular decompositions, including a quantum analog of the Iwasawa decomposition, and they can be written explicitly in terms of generators and relations. Moreover, their centers and their specializations are determined. The constructions follow G. Letzter's theory of quantum symmetric pairs for semisimple Lie algebras. The main additional ingredient is the classification of involutive automorphisms of the second kind of symmetrizable Kac-Moody algebras due to Kac and Wang. The resulting theory comprises various classes of examples which have previously appeared in the literature, such as q-Onsager algebras and the twisted q-Yangians introduced by Molev, Ragoucy, and Sorba.Comment: 61 pages; some typos corrected; final versio