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Describing finite groups by short first-order sentences

2014/09/30 by Andre Nies, Katrin Tent, Nies, Andre +1
Mathematics · #03B70 #20D99 #FOS: Mathematics #Group Theory (math.GR) #Logic (math.LO) #math.GR #math.LO #msc:03B70 #msc:20D99

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1409.8390

Glitches in the proofs of Prop 2.2 and Lemma 3.5 have been fixed. Thanks to the people who have noticed. To appear in Israel J. of Mathematics

arxiv created 2016/04/28 · arxiv updated 2016/04/29

Abstract

We say that a class of finite structures for a finite first-order signature is r-compressible if each structure G in the class has a first-order description of size at most O(r(|G|)). We show that the class of finite simple groups is log-compressible, and the class of all finite groups is log3-compressible. As a corollary we obtain that the class of all finite transitive permutation groups is log3-compressible. The result relies on the classification of finite simple groups, the bi-interpretability of the twisted Ree groups with finite difference fields, the existence of profinite presentations with few relators, and group cohomology. We also indicate why the results are close to optimal.

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