Fibers of automorphic word maps and an application to composition factors (Q1676215)

Let \(G\) be a finite group and let \(w=w(x_{1},x_{2},\ldots,x_{d})\) be a reduced group word in \(d\) variables in the non-abelian free group \(F_{d}\). For every group \(G\) the word \(w\) defines a map \(w_{G}: G \rightarrow G \;\; (g_{1},g_{2},\ldots, g_{d}) \mapsto w(g_{1},g_{2},\ldots,g_{d})\). In the paper under review, the sizes of fibers of this maps are studied for finite groups and, in particular, for finite simple groups. It is shown that if, for some fixed \(0<\varrho\leq 1\), the word map \(w_{G}\) has a fiber of size at least \(\varrho | G |^{d}\), then no large alternating group and no simple group of Lie type of large rank can occur as a composition factor of \(G\).