We show that there is a distortion element in a finitely generated subgroup G of the automorphism group of the full shift, namely an element of infinite order whose word norm grows polylogarithmically. As a corollary, we obtain a lower bound on the entropy dimension of any subshift containing a copy of G, and that a sofic shift’s automorphism group contains a distortion element if and only if the sofic shift is uncountable. We obtain also that groups of Turing machines and the higher-dimensional Brin–Thompson groups $mV$ admit distortion elements; in particular, $2V$ (unlike V) does not admit a proper action on a CAT$(0)$ cube complex. In each case, the distortion element roughly corresponds to the SMART machine of Cassaigne, Ollinger, and Torres-Avilés [A small minimal aperiodic reversible Turing machine. J. Comput. System Sci. 84 (2017), 288–301].

Let $X$ be a connected complex manifold and let $Z$ be a compact complex subspace of $X$. Assume that ${\rm Aut}(Z)$ is strongly Jordan. In this paper, we show that the automorphism group ${\rm Aut}(X,\, Z)$ of all biholomorphisms of $X$ preserving $Z$ is strongly Jordan. A similar result has been proved by Meng et al. for a compact Kähler submanifold $Z$ of $X$ instead of a compact complex subspace $Z$ of $X$. In addition, we also show some rigidity result for free actions of large groups on complex manifolds.

Roelcke non-precompactness, simplicity, and non-amenability of the automorphism group of the Fraïssé limit of finite Heyting algebras are proved among others.

We prove that for any transitive subshift X with word complexity function $c_n(X)$ , if $\liminf ({\log (c_n(X)/n)}/({\log \log \log n})) = 0$ , then the quotient group ${{\mathrm {Aut}(X,\sigma )}/{\langle \sigma \rangle }}$ of the automorphism group of X by the subgroup generated by the shift $\sigma $ is locally finite. We prove that significantly weaker upper bounds on $c_n(X)$ imply the same conclusion if the gap conjecture from geometric group theory is true. Our proofs rely on a general upper bound for the number of automorphisms of X of range n in terms of word complexity, which may be of independent interest. As an application, we are also able to prove that for any subshift X, if ${c_n(X)}/{n^2 (\log n)^{-1}} \rightarrow 0$ , then $\mathrm {Aut}(X,\sigma )$ is amenable, improving a result of Cyr and Kra. In the opposite direction, we show that for any countable infinite locally finite group G and any unbounded increasing $f: \mathbb {N} \rightarrow \mathbb {N}$ , there exists a minimal subshift X with ${{\mathrm {Aut}(X,\sigma )}/{\langle \sigma \rangle }}$ isomorphic to G and ${c_n(X)}/{nf(n)} \rightarrow 0$ .

A probability measure is a characteristic measure of a topological dynamical system if it is invariant to the automorphism group of the system. We show that zero entropy shifts always admit characteristic measures. We use similar techniques to show that automorphism groups of minimal zero entropy shifts are sofic.

We introduce the notion of infinitary interpretation of structures. In general, an interpretation between structures induces a continuous homomorphism between their automorphism groups, and furthermore, it induces a functor between the categories of copies of each structure. We show that for the case of infinitary interpretation the reversals are also true: every Baire-measurable homomorphism between the automorphism groups of two countable structures is induced by an infinitary interpretation, and every Baire-measurable functor between the set of copies of two countable structures is induced by an infinitary interpretation. Furthermore, we show that the complexities are maintained in the sense that if the functor is ${\bf{\Delta }}_\alpha ^0$, then the interpretation that induces it is ${\rm{\Delta }}_\alpha ^{in}$ up to ${\bf{\Delta }}_\alpha ^0$ equivalence.

We show that the class of graded c-nilpotent Lie algebras over a fixed field K is closed under free amalgamation. In [1] this result was applied, but its proof was incorrect. In case of a finite field K we obtain a Fraïssé limit of all finite graded c-nilpotent Lie algebras over K. This gives an example for the following more general considerations. The existence of free amalgamation for the age of a Fraïssé limit implies the universality of its automorphism group for all automorphism groups of substructures of that Fraïssé limit. We use [6] and [5].

Let κ be the cardinality of some saturated model of Peano Arithmetic. There is a set of ${2^{{\aleph _0}}}$ saturated models of PA, each having cardinality κ, such that whenever M and N are two distinct models from this set, then Aut(${\cal M}$) ≇ Aut ($${\cal N}$$).

We consider a code to be a subset of the vertex set of a Hamming graph. We examine elusive pairs, code-group pairs where the code is not determined by knowledge of its set of neighbours. We construct a new infinite family of elusive pairs, where the group in question acts transitively on the set of neighbours of the code. In these examples, the alphabet size always divides the length of the code. We show that there is no elusive pair for the smallest set of parameters that does not satisfy this condition. We also pose several questions regarding elusive pairs.

Let E/k be a function field over an infinite field of constants. Assume that E/k(x) is a separable extension of degree greater than one such that there exists a place of degree one of k(x) ramified in E. Let K/k be a function field. We prove that there exist infinitely many nonisomorphic separable extensions L/K such that [L:K]=[E:k(x)] and AutkL=AutKL≅Autk(x)E.

We describe the group of all reflection-preserving automorphisms of an imprimitive complex reflection group. We also study some properties of this automorphism group.

This note contains some remarks on generating pairs for automorphism groups of free groups. There has been significant use of electronic assistance. Little of this is used to verify the results.

Let A be a finite dimensional algebra (not necessarily associative) over a field, whose automorphism group acts transitively. It is shown that K = GF(2) and A is a Kostrikin algebra. The automorphism group is determined to be a semi-direct product of two cyclic groups. The number of such algebras is also calculated.