Diophantine property in the group of affine transformations of the line

We investigate the Diophantine property of a pair of elements in the group of affine transformations of the line. We say that a pair of elements g_1,g_2 in this group is Diophantine if there is a number A such that a product of length l of elements of the set {g_1,g_2,g_1^{-1},g_2^{-1}} is either the unit element or of distance at least A^{-l} from the unit element. We prove that the set of non-Diophantine pairs in a certain one parameter family is of Hausdorff dimension 0.Comment: 12 pages, no figures, reference to [ABRS] update

Random walks in compact groups

Let X_1,X_2,... be independent identically distributed random elements of a compact group G. We discuss the speed of convergence of the law of the product X_l*...*X_1 to the Haar measure. We give poly-log estimates for certain finite groups and for compact semi-simple Lie groups. We improve earlier results of Solovay, Kitaev, Gamburd, Shahshahani and Dinai.Comment: 35 pages, no figures, revision based on referee's report, results and proofs unchange