A Combinatorial Analog of a Theorem of F.J.Dyson

Tucker's Lemma is a combinatorial analog of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem and the case n=2 was proposed by Tucker in 1945. Numerous generalizations and applications of the Lemma have appeared since then. In 2006 Meunier proved the Lemma in its full generality in his Ph.D. thesis. There are generalizations and extensions of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem that do not yet have combinatorial analogs. In this note, we give a combinatorial analog of a result of Freeman J. Dyson and show that our result is equivalent to Dyson's theorem. As with Tucker's Lemma, we hope that this will lead to generalizations and applications and ultimately a combinatorial analog of Yang's theorem of which both Borsuk-Ulam and Dyson are special cases.Comment: Original version: 7 pages, 2 figures. Revised version: 12 pages, 4 figures, revised proofs. Final revised version: 9 pages, 2 figures, revised proof

Twisted conjugacy classes in nilpotent groups

A group is said to have the $R_\infty$ property if every automorphism has an infinite number of twisted conjugacy classes. We study the question whether $G$ has the $R_\infty$ property when $G$ is a finitely generated torsion-free nilpotent group. As a consequence, we show that for every positive integer $n\ge 5$, there is a compact nilmanifold of dimension $n$ on which every homeomorphism is isotopic to a fixed point free homeomorphism. As a by-product, we give a purely group theoretic proof that the free group on two generators has the $R_\infty$ property. The $R_{\infty}$ property for virtually abelian and for $\mathcal C$-nilpotent groups are also discussed.Comment: 22 pages; section 6 has been moved to section 2 and minor modification has been made on exposition; to be published in Crelle

On Fox spaces and Jacobi identities

In 1945, R. Fox introduced the so-called Fox torus homotopy groups in which the usual homotopy groups are embedded and their Whitehead products are expressed as commutators. A modern treatment of Fox torus homotopy groups and their generalization has been given and studied. In this note, we further explore these groups and their properties. We discuss co-multiplications on Fox spaces and a Jacobi identity for the generalized Whitehead products and the $\Gamma$-Whitehead products.Comment: 16 page

Equivariant evaluation subgroups and Rhodes groups

In this paper, we define equivariant evaluation subgroups of the higher Rhodes groups and study their relations with Gottlieb-Fox groups.Comment: 13 page