We prove that

thus dealing with open problems concerning divisors of binomial coefficients.

1. Let V be a non-singular rational surface defined over an algebraic number field k. There is a standard conjecture that the only obstructions to the Hasse principle and to weak approximation on V are the Brauer–Manin obstructions. A prerequisite for calculating these is a knowledge of the Brauer group of V; indeed there is one such obstruction, which may however be trivial, corresponding to each element of Br V/Br k. Because k is an algebraic number field, the natural injection

is an isomorphism; so the first step in calculating the Brauer–Manin obstruction is to calculate the finite group H1 (k), Pic .

In this paper we assume throughout that the ground field k is algebraically closed and of characteristic zero.

In this paper we shall consider simultaneous approximations to algebraic numbers of the form for rational t1, …, tm, v. If t1, …, tm, are sufficiently close to 1 with respect to a common denominator we shall derive an effective inequality of the form max {|θ1 – p1 / q|, …, |θm – pm / q|} > cq–1–λ for all integers p1, …, pm, q with q > 0. The technique is used to derive the inequality

We use this to show that the only solution to the simultaneous equations

are the trivial ones.

In this paper we show how to construct 781 × 781 matrices over GF(3), generating the largest of the three Fischer groups. For some purposes these are more useful than the permutations on 306936 points, as they require only one-sixth of the storage space. We also construct generators for its triple cover, as 1566 × 1566 matrices over GF(2), and for the derived group thereof, as 783 × 783 matrices over GF(4).

We present a new way of forming a grothendieck group with respect to exact sequences. A ‘defect’ is attached to each non-split sequence and the relation that would normally be derived from a collection of exact sequences is only effective if the (signed) sum of the corresponding defects is zero. The theory of the localization exact sequence and, in particular, of the relative group in this sequence is developed. The (‘locally free’) class group of a module category with exactness defect is defined and an idèlic formula for this is given. The role of torsion and of torsion-free modules is investigated. One aim of the work is to enhance the locally trivial, ‘class group’, invariants obtainable for a module while keeping to a minimum the local obstructions to the definition of such invariants.

In this paper we calculate part of the integral cohomology ring of the sporadic simple group J4; this group has order 221.33.5.7. 113.23.29.31.37.43. More precisely, we obtain all of the cohomology ring except for the 2-primary part. As the cohomology has already been written down [9] at the primes which divide the group order only once, we concentrate here on the primes 3 and 11. In both of these cases the Sylow p-subgroups are extraspecial of order p3 and exponent p. We use the method which identifies the p-primary cohomology with the ring of stable classes in the cohomology of a Sylow p-subgroup. The stable classes are all invariant under the action of the Sylow p-normalizer; and some time is spent finding invariant classes in the cohomology ring of , the extraspecial group. Section 2 studies the prime 11: the invariant classes are the stable classes, because the Sylow 11-subgroups have the Trivial Intersection (T.I.) property. In Section 3 we study the prime 3, and see that all conditions for invariant classes to be stable reduce to one condition.

We introduce a rational-valued invariant which is capable of distinguishing between the commensurability classes of certain discrete groups, namely, the fundamental groups of smooth closed orientable aspherical manifolds of dimensional 4k(k ≥ 1) whose Euler characteristic χ(Λ) is non-zero. The invariant in question is the quotient

where Sign (Λ) is the absolute value of the signature of the intersection form

and [Λ] is a generator of H4k(Λ; ℝ).

Let Fn be the free group of rank n freely generated by x1, x2,…, xn and write d(G) for the minimal number of generators of the finitely generated group G.

The ring of symmetric polynomials in n variables may be interpreted as a ring of characters of the general linear group GL(n) (see e.g. [4], §3·5). We consider here a generalization of symmetric function theory in which we deal with trace functions on several matrices over ℂ An important feature of the ‘single matrix variable’ (or classical) case is the characteristic isomorphism (see [5], chapter I, §7) ch: R = between the graded ring R, whose component Rd in degree d is the character group of the symmetric group of degree d, and the ring of symmetric functions Λ in infinitely many variables (obtained from symmetric functions in n variables by taking the graded inverse limit with respect to n).

The Whitney quasi-rank generating function, which generalizes the Whitney rank generating function (or Tutte polynomial) of a graph, is introduced. It is found to include as special cases the weight enumerator of a (not necessarily linear) code, the percolation probability of an arbitrary clutter and a natural generalization of the chromatic polynomial. The crucial construction, essentially equivalent to one of Kung, is a means of associating, to any function, a rank-like function with suitable properties. Some of these properties, including connections with the Hadamard transform, are discussed.

It is well-known that a compact connected abelian group G has weight w(G) less than or equal to the cardinality c of the continuum if and only if it is monothetic; that is, if and only if it can be topologically generated by one element. Hofmann and Morris [2] extended this by showing that a compact connected (not necessarily abelian) group can be topologically generated by two elements if and only if w(G) ≤ c.

Consider the finite set Xn = {1,2, …,n} ordered in the standard way. Let Tn denote the full transformation semigroup on Xn, that is, the semigroup of all mappings α: Xn→Xn under composition. We shall call α order-preserving if i ≤ j implies iα ≤ jα for i,j∈Xn, and α is decreasing if iα ≤ i for all i∈Xn. This paper investigates combinatorial properties of the semigroup O of all order-preserving mappings on Xn, and of its subsemigroup C which consists of all decreasing and order-preserving mappings.

Let V be an infinite-dimensional real Hilbert space with associated C* Clifford algebra C[V]. To any state σ of the C* algebra C[V] there corresponds a skew-adjoint operator C of norm at most unity on V such that

we refer to C as the covariance of the state σ.

Let f: H1 → H2be any pair of quasitriangular Hopf algebras over k with a Hopf algebra map f between them. We construct in this situation a quasitriangular Hopf algebra B(H1, f, H2) in the braided monoidal category of H1-modules. It consists in the same algebra as H2 with a modified comultiplication and has a quasitriangular structure given by the ratio of those of H1 and H2. This transmutation procedure trades a non-cocommutative Hopf algebra in the category of k-modules for a more cocommutative object in a more non-commutative category. As an application, every Hopf algebra containing the group algebra of ℤ2 becomes transmuted to a super-Hopf algebra.

The genesis of this paper lies in theoretical questions in kinematics where a central role is played by naturally occurring families of rigid motions of 3-space. The resulting trajectories are parametrized families of space curves, and it is important to understand the generic singularities they can exhibit. For practical purposes one seeks to classify germs of space curves of fairly small Ae-codimension. It is however little harder to list the A-simple germs, which includes all germs of Ae-codimension ≤11: that then is the principal objective of this paper.

In [10], Mazur showed that the p-adic lifts of a given absolutely irreducible representation are parametrized by a universal deformation ξ:Gℚ, S → GL2() where has the form . (Here Gℚ, S is the Galois group over ℚ of a maximal algebraic extension unramified outside a finite set S of rational primes.) In [1, 3, 10], situations were investigated where the universal deformation ring turned out to be ℚp[[T1T2, T3]] (i.e. r = 3, I = (0)). In [2], the tame relation of algebraic number theory led to more complicated universal deformation rings, ones whose prime spectra consist essentially of four-dimensional sheets.

A matroid M will be called sign-representable if, for every basis B of M, there is a (0, 1, −l)-matrix [Ir|y] representing M over ℚ in which the first r columns correspond to the members of B. The class of sign-representable matroids, which is closely related to the important class of regular matroids, is easily seen to be closed under both duality and the taking of minors. This paper proves several characterizations of the class, including a constructive one, and shows that the excluded minors for the class are U2, 5, U3, 5, the Fano matroid and its dual, and the rank-3 whirl.

We present a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold M with some surprising properties. The universal covering group of M is a normal torsion-free subgroup of minimal index in one of the nine Coxeter groups G, generated by the reflections in the faces of one of the nine Lannér-tetrahedra (bounded tetrahedra in hyperbolic 3-space all of whose dihedral angles are of the form π/n with n ∈ ℕ see [1] or [3]). The corresponding Coxeter group G splits as a semidirect product G = π1M⋉A, where A is a finite subgroup of G, and G is the only one of the nine Coxeter groups associated to the Lannér-tetrahedra which admits such a splitting (this follows using results in [4]). We derive a presentation of π1M and show that the first homology group H1(M) of M is isomorphic to ℚ11. This is in sharp contrast to other torsion-free (non-normal) subgroups of finite index in Coxeter groups constructed in [1] which all have finite first homology (though it is known that they are all virtually ℚ-representable (see [5], p. 434). It follows from our computations that the Heegaard genus of M is 11, and that there exists a Heegaard splitting of M of genus 11 invariant under the action of the group I+(M) ≌ S5 ⊕ ℚ2 of orientation-preserving isometries of M (we compute this group in [4]), so that the Heegaard genus of M is equal to the equivariant Heegaard genus of the action of I+(M) on M. Moreover M is maximally symmetric in the sense of [4, 6]: the order 120 of the subgroup of index 2 in I+(M) which preserves both handle-bodies of the Heegaard splitting is the maximal possible order of a group of orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of a handle-body of genus 11. (This maximal order is 12(g—1) for a handle-body of genus g; see [7].) By taking the coverings Mq of M corresponding to the surjections π1M→H1(M) ≌ ℚ11→(ℚq)11 for q ∈ ℕ, we obtain explicitly an infinite series of maximally symmetric hyperbolic 3-manifolds.

Let G be a locally compact group and let UG denote the spectrum of the C*-algebra LUC(G) of bounded left uniformly continuous complex-valued functions on G, with the Gelfand topology. Then there is a multiplication on UG extending the multiplication on G (when naturally embedded in UG) such that UG is a semigroup and for each x ∈ UG, the map y ↦ yx from UG into UG is continuous, i.e. UG is a compact right topological semigroup. Consequently UG has a unique minimal ideal K which is the union of minimal (closed) left ideals UG. Furthermore K is the union of the set of maximal subgroups of K (see [3], theorem 3·ll).