We prove that a Banach algebra B that is a completion of the universal enveloping algebra of a finite-dimensional complex Lie algebra $\mathfrak {g}$ satisfies a polynomial identity if and only if the nilpotent radical $\mathfrak {n}$ of $\mathfrak {g}$ is associatively nilpotent in B. Furthermore, this holds if and only if a certain polynomial growth condition is satisfied on $\mathfrak {n}$ .

In this paper we introduce and study the conjugacy ratio of a finitely generated group, which is the limit at infinity of the quotient of the conjugacy and standard growth functions. We conjecture that the conjugacy ratio is 0 for all groups except the virtually abelian ones, and confirm this conjecture for certain residually finite groups of subexponential growth, hyperbolic groups, right-angled Artin groups and the lamplighter group.

Let $\mathbb{L}$ be a length function on a group $G$, and let ${{M}_{\mathbb{L}}}$ denote the operator of pointwise multiplication by $\mathbb{L}$ on ${{\ell }^{2}}\left( G \right)$. Following Connes, ${{M}_{\mathbb{L}}}$ can be used as a “Dirac” operator for the reduced group ${{C}^{*}}$-algebra $C_{r}^{*}\left( G \right)$. It defines a Lipschitz seminorm on $C_{r}^{*}\left( G \right)$, which defines a metric on the state space of $C_{r}^{*}\left( G \right)$. We show that for any length function satisfying a strong form of polynomial growth on a discrete group, the topology from this metric coincides with the weak-$*$ topology (a key property for the definition of a “compact quantum metric space”). In particular, this holds for all word-length functions on finitely generated nilpotent-by-finite groups.

Let $\mathcal{V}$ be a variety of associative algebras generated by an algebra with 1 over a field of characteristic zero. This paper is devoted to the classification of the varieties $\mathcal{V}$ that are minimal of polynomial growth (i.e., their sequence of codimensions grows like ${{n}^{k}}$, but any proper subvariety grows like ${{n}^{t}}$ with $t\,<\,k$). These varieties are the building blocks of general varieties of polynomial growth.

It turns out that for $k\,\le \,4$ there are only a finite number of varieties of polynomial growth ${{n}^{k}}$, but for each $k\,>\,4$, the number of minimal varieties is at least $\left| F \right|$, the cardinality of the base field, and we give a recipe for their construction.

The representation theory of polynomial growth strongly simply connected finite dimensional algebras over an algebraically closed field is established.