Walks on groups, counting reducible matrices, polynomials, and surface and free group automorphisms

DOI10.1215/00127094-2008-009MaRDI QIDQ2482870zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Igor Rivin

Publication date 25 April 2008

Published in Duke Mathematical Journal (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0703532

zbMATH Keywords

compact groupsfree group automorphismsGalois groupslinear groupsmapping class groupsrandom products of matricesrandom walks on graphssemisimple Lie groups

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Graphs and abstract algebra (groups, rings, fields, etc.) (05C25) Arithmetic algebraic geometry (Diophantine geometry) (11G99) Free nonabelian groups (20E05) Automorphisms of infinite groups (20E36) Linear algebraic groups over global fields and their integers (20G30) Probabilistic methods in group theory (20P05) Semisimple Lie groups and their representations (22E46) General geometric structures on low-dimensional manifolds (57M50) Sums of independent random variables; random walks (60G50)

Abstract: We prove sharp limit theorems on random walks on graphs with values in finite groups. We then apply these results (together with some elementary algebraic geometry, number theory, and representation theory) to finite quotients of lattices in semisimple Lie groups (specifically SL(n,Z) and Sp(2n, Z) to show that a ``random element in one of these lattices has irreducible characteristic polynomials (over the integers. The term ``random can be defined in at least two ways (in terms of height and also in terms of word length in terms of a generating set) -- we show the result using both definitions. We use the above results to show that a random (in terms of word length) element of the mapping class group of a surface is pseudo-Anosov, and that a a random free group automorphism is irreducible with irreducible powers (or strongly irreducible).

Review text

The paper under review represents a deep contribution to probability in group theory and it is hard to illustrate its impact on the future investigations on the topic. Therefore it is reasonable to overlap the abstract, being very general and leaving the reader to the pleasure of the discovering. The paper is devoted to prove sharp limit theorems on random walks on graphs with values in finite groups. The main results are applied to finite quotients of lattices in semisimple Lie groups (specifically, \(\text{SL}(n,\mathbb{Z})\) and \(\text{Sp}(2n,\mathbb{Z})\)) to show that a random element in one of these lattices has irreducible characteristic polynomials (over \(\mathbb{Z}\)). The proofs are very nice for use of different techniques which are proper of number theory, of algebraic geometry, of geometric group theory and of functional analysis. Roughly speaking, these techniques allow us to see that a random (in terms of word length) element of the mapping class group of a surface is pseudo-Anosov and that a random free group automorphism is irreducible with irreducible powers.

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