For a random walk on a finitely generated group G we obtain a generalization of a classical inequality of Ancona. We deduce as a corollary that the identity map on G extends to a continuous equivariant surjection from the Martin boundary to the Floyd boundary, with preimages of conical points being singletons. This provides new results for Martin compactifications of relatively hyperbolic groups.

We study large groups of birational transformations Bir(X), where X is a variety of dimension at least 3, defined over C or a subfield of C. Two prominent cases are when X is the projective space P^n, in which case Bir(X) is the Cremona group of rank n, or when X⊂P^{n+1} is a smooth cubic hypersurface. In both cases, and more generally when X is birational to a conic bundle, we produce infinitely many distinct group homomorphisms from Bir(X) to Z/2, showing in particular that the group Bir(X) is not perfect, and thus not simple. As a consequence, we also obtain that the Cremona group of rank n⩾3 is not generated by linear and Jonquières elements.

Li-Nadler proposed a conjecture about traces of Hecke categories, which implies the semistable part of the Betti geometric Langlands conjecture of Ben-Zvi-Nadler in genus 1. We prove a Weyl group analogue of this conjecture. Our theorem holds in the natural generality of reflection groups in Euclidean or hyperbolic space. As a corollary, we give an expression of the centralizer of a finite order element in a reflection group using homotopy theory.

The aim of this paper is to give a proof of the calculation of the flabby class group of a finite cyclic group due to Endo and Miyata [2]. In the next section I will recall the definition and some basic facts about this group. In the final section I will give some examples to show that the invertibility conditions used by Endo and Miyata cannot be removed. I would like to thank M.c. Kang for useful comments and for showing me his results on some related problems.

We characterize those Lie groups, and algebraic groups over a local field of characteristic zero, whose first reduced$L$^{$p$}-cohomology is zero for all$p$>1, extending a result of Pansu. As an application, we obtain a description of Gromov-hyperbolic groups among those groups. In particular we prove that any non-elementary Gromov-hyperbolic algebraic group over a non-Archimedean local field of zero characteristic is quasi-isometric to a 3-regular tree. We also extend the study to general semidirect products of a locally compact group by a cyclic group acting by contracting automorphisms.