The shifted bicyclic-unit free-product conjecture

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Let GG be a finite group, let H≤GH\leq G be a finite subgroup such that Cir⁡QG(H)\operatorname{Cir}_{\mathbb{Q}}^G(H) is non-empty, and let g∈Gg\in G satisfy H∩Hg=1H\cap H^g=1. Let sb⁡H,g\operatorname{sb}_{H,g} and sb⁡g−1,H\operatorname{sb}_{g^{-1},H} denote the shifted bicyclic maps appearing in the source, and let ∗\ast be the canonical involution of QG\mathbb{Q}G defined by g↦g−1g\mapsto g^{-1}. The shifted bicyclic-unit conjecture.

⟨im⁡(sb⁡H,g),im⁡(sb⁡g−1,H)⟩≅H∗H≅⟨im⁡(sb⁡H,g),im⁡(sb⁡H,g)∗⟩.\left\langle\operatorname{im}(\operatorname{sb}_{H,g}),\operatorname{im}(\operatorname{sb}_{g^{-1},H})\right\rangle\cong H\ast H\cong\left\langle\operatorname{im}(\operatorname{sb}_{H,g}),\operatorname{im}(\operatorname{sb}_{H,g})^{\ast}\right\rangle.

The conjecture predicts that appropriately shifted bicyclic maps realize two copies of HH as a free product; the source notes positive results in several nilpotent cases, while the general statement remains open.

References

Primary source

Geoffrey Janssens, Doryan Temmerman and François Thilmany, “Simultaneous ping-pong for finite subgroups of reductive groups”, arXiv:2510.23957 (2025).

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