Groups satisfying semigroup laws, and nilpotent-by-Burnside varieties (Q1372662)

A positive law (or semigroup law) \(u=v\) is one in which the variables occur with positive exponent. The question studied in this paper is whether a group satisfying a positive law must be nilpotent-by-finite. An example of \textit{A. Yu. Ol'shanskij} and \textit{A. Storozhev} [J. Aust. Math. Soc., Ser. A 60, No. 2, 255-259 (1996; Zbl 0859.20022)] shows that this is false in general, but the main result of this paper answers the question affirmatively for a class \(\mathcal C\) of groups, which includes soluble and residually finite groups. An SB-group is one which lies in a product of finitely many varieties each of which is soluble, or a restricted Burnside variety. The class \(\mathcal C\) is the class of groups derived from the class of all SB-groups by repeated applications of the operations \(L\) and \(R\), where for any group-theoretic class \(\mathcal H\) of groups, \(L\mathcal H\) denotes the class of groups locally in \(\mathcal H\) and \(R\mathcal H\) denotes the class of groups residually in \(\mathcal H\). Then it is shown that a group which belongs to \(\mathcal C\) and satisfies a positive law lies in a product of a nilpotent variety and a restricted Burnside variety. Moreover, the class of the nilpotent variety and the exponent of the Burnside variety are bounded by functions of the degree of the word. An interesting corollary of this is that every finitely-generated group in \(\mathcal C\) which satisfies a positive law has a finite basis consisting of positive laws. \textit{G. Bergman} [preprint] raised the question as to whether a group generated by a subsemigroup \(S\) must satisfy any positive law satisfied by \(S\). Again, this is known to be false in general, but is shown in this paper to be true for groups which are soluble by locally finite of finite exponent.