The global Cohen-Lenstra heuristic (Q1758443): Difference between revisions

The Cohen-Lenstra heuristic [\textit{H. Cohen} and \textit{H. W. Lenstra} jun., Lect. Notes Math. 1052, 26--36 (1984; Zbl 0532.12008)] assigns each finite abelian group a weight inversely proportional to the size of its automorphism group. This has been very successful in predicting the frequency of various properties of class groups. The present article starts with a discussion of why the natural finitely additive measures arising in this context cannot be countably additive. The author then defines a \(\sigma\)-algebra and a measure on the set of finite abelian groups. These are compatible with the Cohen-Lenstra heuristics for what the author calls \textit{uniform properties}, which include the minimum number of generators of a group but not its exponent or order. To remedy this, a closely related \textit{uniform order} and \textit{uniform exponent} are defined that are measurable for this measure.