Surface words are determined by word measures on groups (Q2022796)

Let \(\mathbf{F}_r\) be the free group on \(r\) generators \(x_1,\ldots,x_r\) and let \(G\) be a group. Every element \(w \in \mathbb{F}_r\) induces a map \(w: G^{r} \rightarrow G\), called a word map defined by substitutions. For example, if \(w=x_{1}^{-1}x_{2}^{-1}x_{1}x_{2}=[x_1,x_2]\in \mathbf{F}_{2}\), then \(w(g,h)=[g,h] \in G\) and \(w\) is called the commutator word. Let \(G\) be a compact group, the push-forward via a word map \(w\) of the Haar probability measure \(G^{r}\) is called the \(w\)-measure on \(G\). If \(w\) is the commutator word, a random element sampled by the \(w\)-measure is given by the commutator \([g,h]\) of two independent, Haar-random elements of \(G\). Back in 1896, Frobenius showed that if \(G\) is a finite group and \(\psi\) is an irreducible character of \(G\), then the expected value of \(\psi([g,h])\) is \(\psi(e)^{-1}\). This is true for any compact group, and completely determines the \(w\)-measure on these groups. An analogous result holds with the commutator word replaced by any surface word. The paper under review is devoted to proving the converse (Theorem 1.4): Let \(w \in \mathbf{F}_{r}\). If \(w\) induces the same measure as \([x_1, y_1] \cdot \ldots \cdot [x_{\gamma}, y_{\gamma}]\) (resp. as \(x_{1}^{2}\cdot \ldots \cdot x_{\gamma}^{2}\)) on every compact group, then \(r \geq 2\gamma\) (resp. \(r \geq \gamma\)) and there is \(\theta \in \mathrm{Aut}(\mathbf{F}_{r})\) such that \(\theta(w)=[x_1, y_1] \cdot \ldots \cdot [x_{\gamma}, y_{\gamma}]\) (resp. \(\theta(w)=x_{1}^{2}\cdot \ldots \cdot x_{\gamma}^{2}\)). The strong conjecture that if \(w_1, w_2 \in \mathbf{F}_{r}\) and \(w_1\), \(w_2\) induce the same measure on every compact group, then \(\theta(w_{1})=w_{2}\) for some \(\theta \in \mathrm{Aut}(\mathbf{F}_{r})\) is open and seems to be extremely challenging.