The degree of commutativity of an infinite group
Apparaît également dans la collection : GAGTA-9: geometric, asymptotic and combinatorial group theory and applications / GAGTA-9 : Théorie géométrique, asymptotique et combinatoire des groupes et applications
There is a classical result saying that, in a finite group, the probability that two elements commute is never between $5/8$ and 1 (i.e., if it is bigger than $5/8$ then the group is abelian). It seems clear that this fact cannot be translated/adapted to infinite groups, but it is possible to give a notion of degree of commutativity for finitely generated groups (w.r.t. a fixed finite set of generators) as the limit of such probabilities, when counted over successively growing balls in the group. This asymptotic notion is a lot more vague than in the finite setting, but we are still able to prove some results concerning this new concept, the main one being the following: for any finitely generated group of polynomial growth $G$, the commuting degree of $G$ is positive if and only if $G$ is virtually abelian.
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