On non-surjective word maps on \(\mathrm{PSL}_2(\mathbb{F}_q)\) (Q6189004)

Let \(w\) be a word in \(k\) variables and let \(G\) be a group. The verbal map (associated to \(w\)) is \(w: G^{k} \rightarrow G \;\; (g_{1}, \ldots, g_{k}) \mapsto w(g_{1}, \ldots, g_{k})\). It was shown by \textit{M. W. Liebeck} and \textit{A. Shalev} [Ann. Math. (2) 154, No. 2, 383--406 (2001; Zbl 1003.20014)] that for a given nontrivial word \(w\), each element of each large enough finite simple group \(G\) can be expressed as a product of \(c(w)\) values of \(w\) in \(G\) (unless \(w\) is trivial on \(G\)), where \(c(w)\) is a positive integer only depending on \(w\). In [\textit{S. Jambor} et al., Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 45, No. 5, 907--910 (2013; Zbl 1292.20014)], for primes \(q \geq 5\), the words of the form \(w(x_{1},x_{2})=x_{1}^{2}[x_{1},x_{2}]^{(q-1)/2}\) have been considered and the non-surjectivity of the induced word map on \(\mathrm{PSL}_{2}(\mathbb{F}_{p^{n}})\) has been established for primes \(p\) and integers \(n\) satisfying certain suitable conditions. This provided the first counterexamples to a conjecture of Shalev (see [\textit{T. Bandman} et al., Groups Geom. Dyn. 6, No. 3, 409--439 (2012; Zbl 1261.14010), Conjecture 8.3]) which stated that if a two-variable word is not a proper power of a non-trivial word, then the corresponding word map is surjective on \(\mathrm{PSL}_{2}(\mathbb{F}_{q})\) for all sufficiently large \(q\). The authors, motivated by the results listed above, construct new examples of these types of non-surjective word maps. As an application, they obtain non-surjective word maps on the absolute Galois group of \(\mathbb{Q}\) and on \(\mathrm{SL}_{2}(K)\), where \(K\) is a number field of odd degree.