Babai's polylogarithmic diameter conjecture for finite simple groups

Let GG be a nonabelian finite simple group, and let diam(G)\operatorname{diam}(G) denote the maximum of diam(G,X)\operatorname{diam}(G,X) over all generating sets XX of GG. Babai’s conjecture.

diam(G)(logG)O(1).\operatorname{diam}(G)\ll(\log|G|)^{O(1)}.

This is the principal conjectural diameter bound for finite simple groups. The source attributes it to Babai, while noting that it first appeared jointly with Seress. The conjecture remains open for AnA_n and for other simple groups of unbounded rank.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Sean Eberhard, Elena Maini, Luca Sabatini and Gareth Tracey, “Diameter bounds for arbitrary finite groups and applications”, arXiv:2604.15303 (2026).

Additional references

23 papers in this index state this conjecture (2005–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2509.15351, arXiv:2409.06929, arXiv:2203.03323, arXiv:2110.13861, arXiv:2110.02942, arXiv:2103.05935, arXiv:2002.10443, arXiv:1902.06308, arXiv:1811.05401, arXiv:1802.06959, arXiv:1704.04047, arXiv:1511.08535, and 10 more.

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