Generalised Beauville groups (Q2078829)

A ``Beauville group'' is a finite group that can be generated from two elements in two different ways, so \( G = \langle g_1, g_2 \rangle = \langle h_1, h_2 \rangle \), in a way that no power nor of \( g_1 \), neither of \( g_2 \) nor of their product \( g_1g_2 \) other than identity is conjugated to any non-trivial power of \( h_1 \), nor of \( h_2 \) nor of their product \( h_1h_2 \). The interest in these groups arises from algebraic geometry, in particular from works by F. Catanese who, inspired by a construction of A. Beauville, showed how to associate to each such group an algebraic surface with interesting properties such as the rigidity of its complex structure. The study of groups with such properties then gave rise to a series of interesting researches, more properly of group theory, within which this article is placed. The authors consider in this article a generalization of the concept of Beauville group, as indicated by the title, in which they ask themselves the question of finding \( d \) sets of generators with a similar property as above, i.e. that no element induced as above by the first set of generators is conjugated to elements induced as above by ALL the other \( d-1 \) together. If \( d \) is the minimum for which the answer is affirmative, they call it the ``Beauville dimension''. The Beauville groups are therefore those of dimension \( 2 \). The generalized Beauville groups have \( d \geq 2 \), while \( d = 1 \) is set when the answer is negative for each \( d \geq 2 \). This generalization is also motivated by algebraic geometry, since \(d\) such sistems of generators induce in a similar way an interesting complex manifold of dimension \(d\). The main result is the classification of the Beauville dimension of all finite groups of order less than or equal to \( 1023 \), contained in the tables at the end of the article.