Let V denote the class of discrete groups G which satisfy the following conditions (a), (b) and (c):

(a) G = (A * B; K = φ(H)) is the free product of two groups A and B with the subgroup H amalgamated.

(b) H does not contain the verbal subgroup A(X2) of A and K does not contain the verbal subgroup B(X2)of B.

We let X be an arbitrary infinite set. A semigroup S of total or partial transformations of X is called -normal if hSh-1 = S, for all h in , the symmetric group on X. For example, the full transformation semigroup , the semigroup of all partial transformations , the semigroup of all 1–1 partial transformations and all ideals of and are -normal.

Dans tout ce qui suit, H désigne un espace de Hilbert séparable, A un opérateur fermé de domaine D(A) dans H, on note B(H) l'ensemble des opérateurs bornés de H dans lui-même et N(A), R(A) respectivement le noyau de A, l'image de A.

En 1958, T. Kato a démontré dans [7] le théorème suivant.

It is well known that if α and β are commuting *-automorphisms of a von Neumann algebra M satisfying the equation α + α-1 = β + β-1 then M can be decomposed into a direct sum of subalgebras Mp and M(l − p) by a central projection p in M such that α = β on Mp and α = β-1 on M(1 − p) (see, for instance, [6], [7], [2]). Originally this equation arose in the Tomita-Takesaki theory (see, for example, [11]) in the form of one-parameter modular automorphism groups and later on it has been studied for arbitrary automorphisms and one-parameter groups of automorphisms on von Neumann algebras [7], [8], [9]. In the case of automorphism groups satisfying the above equation, one has a similar decomposition but this time without assuming the commutativity condition (cf. [7], [8]). For another relevant work on one-parameter groups of automorphisms which is close to our papers [7] and [8], we refer to Ciorănescu and Zsidó [1]. Regarding applications, this equation has been used for arbitrary automorphisms in the geometric interpretation of the Tomita-Takesaki theory [2] and in the case of automorphism groups it has been a fundamental tool in the generalization of the Tomita-Takesaki theory to Jordan algebras [3]. We may remark that the decomposition in the commuting case [6], [7] is much simpler than in the case of automorphism groups in the non-commutative situation [8]. In some cases one can obtain the decomposition for an arbitrary pair of automorphisms without assuming their commutativity but the problem in the general case has been unresolved. Recently we have shown that if α and β are *-automorphisms of a von Neumann algebra M satisfying the equation α + α-1 = β + β-1 (without assuming the commutativity of α and β) then there exists a central projection p in M such that α2= β2 on Mp and α2 = β−2 on M(l − p) [10].

Let Mn be the C*-algebra of n × n complex matrices. If A is a C*-algebra, let Mn(A) denote the C*-algebra of n × nmatrices a = [aij] with entries in A. For a linear map between C*-algebras, we define the multiplicity map by A linear map Ø is said to be completely bounded if Let B(A, B), CB(A, B) denote the Banach space of bounded linear maps, the set of completely bounded maps from A to B, respectively.

A tensor is said to be isotropic relative to a group of transformations if its components are invariant under the associated group of coordinate transformations. In this paper we review the classification of tensors which are isotropic under the general linear group, the special linear (unimodular) group and the rotational group. These correspond respectively to isotropic absolute tensors [4, 8] isotropic relative tensors [4] and isotropic Cartesian tensors [3]. New proofs are given for the representation of isotropic tensors in terms of Kronecker deltas and alternating tensors. And, for isotropic Cartesian tensors, we provide a complete classification, clarifying results described in [3].

In the final section of the paper certain derivatives of isotropic tensor fields are examined.

In this paper, we continue the work initiated by Morris [5] and Saeed-ul-Islam [6,7] and determine complete sets of inequivalent irreducible projective representations (which we shall write as i.p.r.) of finite Abelian groups with respect to some additional factor sets.

We consider an Abelian group

which will be referred to as an Abelian group of type (a1, …, am).

Let ω be a non-empty set, ℱ a Boolean σ-algebra of subsets of Ω, k a natural number, and let m:ℱ→ℝk be a non-atomic vector measure. Then, by the celebrated theorem of Liapounov [11], the range m[3F] = {m(A): A ε ℱ3F} of m is a compact convex subset of ℝk. This theorem has been generalized in a number of ways. For example Kingman and Robertson [8] and Knowles [9] have shown that, under appropriate conditions, results in the same spirit can be proved for measures taking their values in infinite-dimensional vector spaces. Another type of generalization was obtained by Dvoretsky, Wald and Wolfowitz [6,7]. What they do is to take m as above together with a natural number n≥ 1. They then consider the set Knof all vectors

where (A1 A2,…, An) is an ordered ℱ-measurable partition of Ω (i.e. a partition whose terms A, all belong to ℱ). They prove in [6] that Kn is a compact convex subset of ℝnk and moreover that Kn is equal to the set of all vectors of the form

where (ϕ1, ϕ2…, ϕn) is an ℱ-measurable partition of unity; i.e. it is an n-tuple of non-negative ϕr on Ω such that

Liapounov's theorem can be obtained as a corollary of this result by taking n= 2.

The aim of this paper is to prove the irrationality of a certain class of infinite series. The main theorem is related to some results due to Erdos and Straus [7], Erdos [5] and Sándor [15]. As applications of the main result, the solutions of two problems posed by Erdös and Graham [6] are given, among others.

Let Bn denote the unit ball and Un the unit polydisc in Cn. In this paper we consider questions concerned with inner functions and embeddings of Hardy spaces over bounded symmetric domains. The main result (Theorem 2) states that for a classical symmetric domain D of type I and rank(D) = s, there exists an isometric embedding of Hl(Us) onto a complemented subspace of Hl(D). This should be compared with results of Wojtaszczyk [13] and Bourgain [3, 4] which state that H1(Bn) is isomorphic to Hl(U) while for n>m, Hl(Un) cannot be isomorphically embedded onto a complemented subspace of H1(Um). Since balls are the only bounded symmetric domains of rank 1 and they are of type I, Theorem 2 shows that if rank(D1) = 1, rank(D2) > 1 then H1(D1) is not isomorphic to H1(D2). It is natural to expect this to hold always when rank(D1 ≠ rank(D2) but unfortunately we were not able to prove this.

In a previous paper [7], I have made a study of the ”nilpotent” analogue of Hurwitz theorem [4] by considering a particular family of signatures called ”nilpotent admissible” [5]. We saw however, that if μN(g) represents the order of the largest nilpotent group of automorphisms of a surface of genus g < 2, then μN(g) < 16(g − 1) and this upper bound occurs when the covering group is a triangle group having the signature (0; 2,4,8) which is in its own 2-local form

The restriction to the nilpotent groups enabled me to obtain much more precise information than was available in the general case. Moreover, all nilpotent groups attaining this maximum order turned out to be ”2-groups”. Since every finite nilpotent group is the direct product of its Sylow subgroups and the groups of automorphisms are factor groups of the Fuchsian groups, it is natural for us to study the Fuchsian groups havin p-local signatures to obtain more precise information about the finite p-groups, and hence about the finite nilpotent groups.

This suggests a new problem of determining for each prime p, the “p-group” analogue of Hurwitz theorem. It turns out, as often happens in questions of this nature, that p = 2 and p = 3 are indeed quite exceptional and harder to deal with while computing their lower central series than other primes. Actually, p = 3 is the most difficult, but all the other primes p ≥ 5 can be dealt with at once.

Let H denote a separable, infinite dimensional Hilbert space. Let B(H), C2 and C1 denote the algebra of all bounded linear operators acting on H, the Hilbert–Schmidt class and the trace class in B(H) respectively. It is well known that C2 and C1 each form a two-sided-ideal in B(H) and C2 is itself a Hilbert space with the inner product

where {ei} is any orthonormal basis of H and tr(.) is the natural trace on C1. The Hilbert–Schmidt norm of X ∈ C2 is given by ⅡXⅡ2=(X, X)½.

Isotropes play a distinguished rôle in the algebra of spinors. Let V be an even-dimensional real vector space equipped with an inner product Bof arbitrary signature. An isotrope of (V, B) is a subspace of the complexification Vc on which Bc is identically zero. Denote by ρ the spin representation of the complex Clifford algebra C(Vc, Bc) on a space S of spinors.

Many authors have investigated the behaviour of the elements of finite order of a group G when finiteness conditions are imposed on the automorphism group Aut G of G. The first result was obtained in 1955 by Baer [1], who proved thata torsion group with finitely many automorphisms is finite. This theorem was generalized by Nagrebeckii in [6], where he proved that if the automorphism group Aut G is finite then the set of elements of finite order of G is a finite subgroup.

In [3] Gilbert Baumslag asserted that, for non-zero integers α, β, γ, δ such that α + γ ≠ 0 ≠ β + δ, the group G = <a, b:aα, bβaγbδ> is residually finite (RF). This result has been quoted in the literature: for example, in [2]. At the “Groups '85” meeting at St. Andrews, the second author learned, indirectly, that Professor Baumslag could not recall all the details of the rather complicated (unpublished) proof he had constructed and that he referred those asking for a proof to the present authors. It thus seems worthwhile formally to record the following fairly short proof of the above claim.

Talagrand has shown [4, p. 76] that there exists a continuous linear operator from L1[0, 1] to c0 which is not a Dunford-Pettis operator. In contrast to this result, Gretsky and Ostroy [2] have recently proved that every positive operator from L[0, 1] to c0 is a Dunford-Pettis operator, hence that every regular operator between these spaces (i.e. a difference of positive operators) is Dunford-Pettis.