We introduce and study two conditions on groups of homeomorphisms of Cantor space, namely the conditions of being vigorous and of being flawless. These concepts are dynamical in nature, and allow us to study a certain interplay between the dynamics of an action and the algebraic properties of the acting group. A group $G\leq \operatorname {Homeo}(\mathfrak {C})$ is vigorous if for any clopen set A and proper clopen subsets B and C of A, there is $\gamma \in G$ in the pointwise stabiliser of $\mathfrak {C}\backslash A$ with $B\gamma \subseteq C$. A nontrivial group $G\leq \operatorname {Homeo}(\mathfrak {C})$ is flawless if for all k and w a nontrivial freely reduced product expression on k variables (including inverse symbols), a particular subgroup $w(G)_\circ $ of the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is the whole group. We show: 1) simple vigorous groups are either two-generated by torsion elements, or not finitely generated, 2) flawless groups are both perfect and lawless, 3) vigorous groups are simple if and only if they are flawless, and, 4) the class of vigorous simple subgroups of $\operatorname {Homeo}(\mathfrak {C})$ is fairly broad (the class is closed under various natural constructions and contains many well known groups, such as the commutator subgroups of the Higman–Thompson groups $G_{n,r}$, the Brin-Thompson groups $nV$, Röver’s group $V(\Gamma )$, and others of Nekrashevych’s ‘simple groups of dynamical origin’).

A generating set for a finite group G is minimal if no proper subset generates G, and $m(G)$ denotes the maximal size of a minimal generating set for G. We prove a conjecture of Lucchini, Moscatiello and Spiga by showing that there exist $a,b> 0$ such that any finite group G satisfies $m(G) \leqslant a \cdot \delta (G)^b$, for $\delta (G) = \sum _{p \text { prime}} m(G_p)$, where $G_p$ is a Sylow p-subgroup of G. To do this, we first bound $m(G)$ for all almost simple groups of Lie type (until now, no nontrivial bounds were known except for groups of rank $1$ or $2$). In particular, we prove that there exist $a,b> 0$ such that any finite simple group G of Lie type of rank r over the field $\mathbb {F}_{p^f}$ satisfies $r + \omega (f) \leqslant m(G) \leqslant a(r + \omega (f))^b$, where $\omega (f)$ denotes the number of distinct prime divisors of f. In the process, we confirm a conjecture of Gill and Liebeck that there exist $a,b> 0$ such that a minimal base for a faithful primitive action of an almost simple group of Lie type of rank r over $\mathbb {F}_{p^f}$ has size at most $ar^b + \omega (f)$.

A subgroup H of a group G is said to be pronormal in G if each of its conjugates $H^g$ in G is already conjugate to it in the subgroup $\langle H,H^g\rangle $. The aim of this paper is to classify those (locally) finite simple groups which have only nilpotent or pronormal subgroups.

The higher-dimensional Thompson groups $nV$, for $n \geqslant 2$, were introduced by Brin [‘Presentations of higher dimensional Thompson groups’, J. Algebra 284 (2005), 520–558]. We provide new presentations for each of these infinite simple groups. The first is an infinite presentation, analogous to the Coxeter presentation for the finite symmetric group, with generating set equal to the set of transpositions in $nV$ and reflecting the self-similar structure of n-dimensional Cantor space. We then exploit this infinite presentation to produce further finite presentations that are considerably smaller than those previously known.

In this paper, we consider the $T$- and $V$-versions, ${T_\tau }$ and ${V_\tau }$, of the irrational slope Thompson group ${F_\tau }$ considered in J. Burillo, B. Nucinkis and L. Reeves [An irrational-slope Thompson's group, Publ. Mat. 65 (2021), 809–839]. We give infinite presentations for these groups and show how they can be represented by tree-pair diagrams similar to those for $T$ and $V$. We also show that ${T_\tau }$ and ${V_\tau }$ have index-$2$ normal subgroups, unlike their original Thompson counterparts $T$ and $V$. These index-$2$ subgroups are shown to be simple.

To every dynamical system $(X,\varphi )$ over a totally disconnected compact space, we associate a left-orderable group $T(\varphi )$. It is defined as a group of homeomorphisms of the suspension of $(X,\varphi )$ which preserve every orbit of the suspension flow and act by dyadic piecewise linear homeomorphisms in the flow direction. We show that if the system is minimal, the group is simple and, if it is a subshift, then the group is finitely generated. The proofs of these two statements are short and elementary, providing straightforward examples of finitely generated simple left-orderable groups. We show that if the system is minimal, every action of the corresponding group on the circle has a fixed point. These constitute the first examples of finitely generated left-orderable groups with this fixed point property. We show that for every system $(X,\varphi )$, the group $T(\varphi )$ does not have infinite subgroups with Kazhdan's property $(T)$. In addition, we show that for every minimal subshift, the corresponding group is never finitely presentable. Finally, if $(X,\varphi )$ has a dense orbit, then the isomorphism type of the group $T(\varphi )$ is a complete invariant of flow equivalence of the pair $\{\varphi , \varphi ^{-1}\}$.

We consider the finitely generated groups acting on a regular tree with almost prescribed local action. We show that these groups embed as cocompact irreducible lattices in some locally compact wreath products. This provides examples of finitely generated simple groups quasi-isometric to a wreath product $C\wr F$, where $C$ is a finite group and $F$ a non-abelian free group.

We study lattices in a product $G=G_{1}\times \cdots \times G_{n}$ of non-discrete, compactly generated, totally disconnected locally compact (tdlc) groups. We assume that each factor is quasi just-non-compact, meaning that $G_{i}$ is non-compact and every closed normal subgroup of $G_{i}$ is discrete or cocompact (e.g. $G_{i}$ is topologically simple). We show that the set of discrete subgroups of $G$ containing a fixed cocompact lattice $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ with dense projections is finite. The same result holds if $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ is non-uniform, provided $G$ has Kazhdan’s property (T). We show that for any compact subset $K\subset G$, the collection of discrete subgroups $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\leqslant G$ with $G=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}K$ and dense projections is uniformly discrete and hence of covolume bounded away from $0$. When the ambient group $G$ is compactly presented, we show in addition that the collection of those lattices falls into finitely many $\operatorname{Aut}(G)$-orbits. As an application, we establish finiteness results for discrete groups acting on products of locally finite graphs with semiprimitive local action on each factor. We also present several intermediate results of independent interest. Notably it is shown that if a non-discrete, compactly generated quasi just-non-compact tdlc group $G$ is a Chabauty limit of discrete subgroups, then some compact open subgroup of $G$ is an infinitely generated pro-$p$ group for some prime $p$. It is also shown that in any Kazhdan group with discrete amenable radical, the lattices form an open subset of the Chabauty space of closed subgroups.

Let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\leqslant \text{Aut}(T_{d_{1}})\times \text{Aut}(T_{d_{2}})$ be a group acting freely and transitively on the product of two regular trees of degree $d_{1}$ and $d_{2}$. We develop an algorithm that computes the closure of the projection of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ on $\text{Aut}(T_{d_{t}})$ under the hypothesis that $d_{t}\geqslant 6$ is even and that the local action of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ on $T_{d_{t}}$ contains $\text{Alt}(d_{t})$. We show that if $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ is torsion-free and $d_{1}=d_{2}=6$, exactly seven closed subgroups of $\text{Aut}(T_{6})$ arise in this way. We also construct two new infinite families of virtually simple lattices in $\text{Aut}(T_{6})\times \text{Aut}(T_{4n})$ and in $\text{Aut}(T_{2n})\times \text{Aut}(T_{2n+1})$, respectively, for all $n\geqslant 2$. In particular, we provide an explicit presentation of a torsion-free infinite simple group on 5 generators and 10 relations, that splits as an amalgamated free product of two copies of $F_{3}$ over $F_{11}$. We include information arising from computer-assisted exhaustive searches of lattices in products of trees of small degrees. In an appendix by Pierre-Emmanuel Caprace, some of our results are used to show that abstract and relative commensurator groups of free groups are almost simple, providing partial answers to questions of Lubotzky and Lubotzky–Mozes–Zimmer.

Let $G$ be a simple exceptional algebraic group of adjoint type over an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p>0$ and let $X=\text{PSL}_{2}(p)$ be a subgroup of $G$ containing a regular unipotent element $x$ of $G$. By a theorem of Testerman, $x$ is contained in a connected subgroup of $G$ of type $A_{1}$. In this paper we prove that with two exceptions, $X$ itself is contained in such a subgroup (the exceptions arise when $(G,p)=(E_{6},13)$ or $(E_{7},19)$). This extends earlier work of Seitz and Testerman, who established the containment under some additional conditions on $p$ and the embedding of $X$ in $G$. We discuss applications of our main result to the study of the subgroup structure of finite groups of Lie type.

Let $T$ be a finite simple group of Lie type in characteristic $p$, and let $S$ be a Sylow subgroup of $T$ with maximal order. It is well known that $S$ is a Sylow $p$-subgroup except for an explicit list of exceptions and that $S$ is always ‘large’ in the sense that $|T|^{1/3}<|S|\leq |T|^{1/2}$. One might anticipate that, moreover, the Sylow $r$-subgroups of $T$ with $r\neq p$ are usually significantly smaller than $S$. We verify this hypothesis by proving that, for every $T$ and every prime divisor $r$ of $|T|$ with $r\neq p$, the order of the Sylow $r$-subgroup of $T$ is at most $|T|^{2\lfloor \log _{r}(4(\ell +1)r)\rfloor /\ell }=|T|^{O(\log _{r}(\ell )/\ell )}$, where $\ell$ is the Lie rank of $T$.

Let $T$ be a locally finite tree without vertices of degree $1$. We show that among the closed subgroups of $\text{Aut}(T)$ acting with a bounded number of orbits, the Chabauty-closure of the set of topologically simple groups is the set of groups without proper open subgroup of finite index. Moreover, if all vertices of $T$ have degree ${\geqslant}3$, then the set of isomorphism classes of topologically simple closed subgroups of $\text{Aut}(T)$ acting doubly transitively on $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}T$ carries a natural compact Hausdorff topology inherited from Chabauty. Some of our considerations are valid in the context of automorphism groups of locally finite connected graphs. Applications to Weyl-transitive automorphism groups of buildings are also presented.

In this paper, we establish that complete Kac–Moody groups over finite fields are abstractly simple. The proof makes essential use of Mathieu and Rousseau’s construction of complete Kac–Moody groups over fields. This construction has the advantage that both real and imaginary root spaces of the Lie algebra lift to root subgroups over arbitrary fields. A key point in our proof is the fact, of independent interest, that both real and imaginary root subgroups are contracted by conjugation of positive powers of suitable Weyl group elements.

In this paper we deal with locally graded groups whose subgroups are either subnormal or soluble of bounded derived length, say d. In particular, we prove that every locally (soluble-by-finite) group with this property is either soluble or an extension of a soluble group of derived length at most d by a finite group, which fits between a minimal simple group and its automorphism group. We also classify all the finite non-abelian simple groups whose proper subgroups are metabelian.

While the classification project for the simple groups of finite Morley rank is unlikely to produce a classification of the simple groups of finite Morley rank, the enterprise has already arrived at a considerably closer approximation to that ideal goal than could have been realistically anticipated, with a mix of results of several flavors, some classificatory and others more structural, which can be combined when the stars are suitably aligned to produce results at a level of generality which, in parallel areas of group theory, would normally require either some additional geometric structure, or an explicit classification. And Bruno Poizat is generally awesome, though sometimes he goes too far.

A sufficient criterion is found for certain permutation groups $G$ to have uncountable strong cofinality, that is, they cannot be expressed as the union of a countable, ascending chain $(H_i)_{i\in\o}$ of proper subsets $H_i$ such that $H_iH_i \subseteq H_{i+1}$ and $H_i\,{=}\,H_i^{-1}$. This is a strong form of uncountable cofinality for $G$, where each $H_i$ is a subgroup of $G$. This basic tool comes from a recent paper by Bergman on generating systems of the infinite symmetric groups, which is discussed in the introduction. The main result is a theorem which can be applied to various classical groups including the symmetric groups and homeomorphism groups of Cantor's discontinuum, the rationals, and the irrationals, respectively. They all have uncountable strong cofinality. Thus the result also unifies various known results about cofinalities. A notable example is the group BSym ($\Q$) of all bounded permutations of the rationals $\Q$ which has uncountable cofinality but countable strong cofinality.

The normalized positive definite class functions $\C G\,{\longrightarrow}\,\C$ are determined for all those direct limits $G$ of finite alternating groups $\Alt(\Omega_i)$ for which the embeddings $\Alt(\Omega_i)\,{\longrightarrow}\,\Alt(\Omega_j)$ are natural in the sense that every non-trivial $\Alt(\Omega_i)$-orbit in $\Omega_j$ is natural.

This paper is a contribution to the “revision” project of Gorenstein, Lyons and Solomon, whose goal is to produce a unified proof of the Classification of Finite Simple Groups.