Let G be a Baumslag–Solitar group. We calculate the intersection $\gamma_{\omega}(G)$ of all terms of the lower central series of G. Using this, we show that $[\gamma_{\omega}(G),G]=\gamma_{\omega}(G)$, thus answering a question of Bardakov and Neschadim [1]. For any $c \in \mathbb{N}$, with $c \geq 2$, we show, by using Lie algebra methods, that the quotient group $\gamma_{c}(G)/\gamma_{c+1}(G)$ of the lower central series of G is finite.

Suppose that a finite group G admits an automorphism of order 2n such that the fixed-point subgroup of the involution is nilpotent of class c. Let m = ) be the number of fixed points of . It is proved that G has a characteristic soluble subgroup of derived length bounded in terms of n, c whose index is bounded in terms of m, n, c. A similar result is also proved for Lie rings.

The main result of this paper is the following theorem. Let q be a prime and A be an elementary abelian group of order q3. Suppose that A acts as a coprime group of automorphisms on a profinite group G in such a manner that CG(a)′ is periodic for each a ∈ A#. Then G′ is locally finite.

The following theorem is proved. Let m, k and n be positive integers. There exists a number η=η(m,k,n) depending only on m, k and n such that if G is any residually finite group satisfying the condition that the product of any η commutators of the form [xm,y1,…,yk ] is of order dividing n, then the verbal subgroup of G corresponding to the word w=[xm,y1,…,yk ] is locally finite.

In this paper we construct new obstructions for the surjectivity of the Johnson homomorphism of the automorphism group of a free group. We also determine the structure of the cokernel of the Johnson homomorphism for degrees 2 and 3.

We show that if G is a finitely generated profinite group such that [x1, x2, …, xk] is Engel for any x1, x2, …, xk ∈ G, then γ(G) is locally nilpotent, and if [x1, x2, …, xk] has finite order for any x1, x2, …, xk ∈ G then, under some additional assumptions, γk(G) is locally finite.