Statistical properties of subgroups of free groups

The usual way to investigate the statistical properties of finitely generated subgroups of free groups, and of finite presentations of groups, is based on the so-called word-based distribution: subgroups are generated (finite presentations are determined) by randomly chosen k -tuples of reduced word...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Bassino, Frederique, Martino, Armando, Nicaud, Cyril, Ventura Capell, Enric|||0000-0003-3519-4135, Weil, Pascal
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2013
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/19212
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/19212
https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/rsa.20407
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:subgroups of free groups
finite group presentations
statistical properties
Stallings graphs
partial injections
malnormality
Group theory
Infinite groups
Grups, Teoria de
Grups infinits
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Matemàtiques i estadística::Àlgebra::Teoria de grups
Descripción
Sumario:The usual way to investigate the statistical properties of finitely generated subgroups of free groups, and of finite presentations of groups, is based on the so-called word-based distribution: subgroups are generated (finite presentations are determined) by randomly chosen k -tuples of reduced words, whose maximal length is allowed to tend to infinity. In this paper we adopt a different, though equally natural point of view: we investigate the statistical properties of the same objects, but with respect to the so-called graph-based distribution, recently introduced by Bassino, Nicaud and Weil. Here, subgroups (and finite presentations) are determined by randomly chosen Stallings graphs whose number of vertices tends to infinity. Our results show that these two distributions behave quite differently from each other, shedding a new light on which properties of finitely generated subgroups can be considered frequent or rare. For example, we show that malnormal subgroups of a free group are negligible in the graph-based distribution, while they are exponentially generic in the word-based distribution. Quite surprisingly, a random finite presentation generically presents the trivial group in this new distribution, while in the classical one it is known to generically present an infinite hyperbolic group.