We investigate a class of generalised stochastic complex matrices constructed from the class of all doubly stochastic matrices and a special class of circulant matrices. We determine the exact values of the structured singular values of all matrices in the class in terms of the constant row (column) sum.

Motivated by a famous question of Lehmer about the Mahler measure, we study and solve its analytic analogue.

Let f be an elliptic modular form and p an odd prime that is coprime to the level of f. We study the link between divisors of the characteristic ideal of the p-primary fine Selmer group of f over the cyclotomic $\mathbb {Z}_p$ extension of $\mathbb {Q}$ and the greatest common divisor of signed Selmer groups attached to f defined using the theory of Wach modules. One of the key ingredients of our proof is a generalisation of a result of Wingberg on the structure of fine Selmer groups of abelian varieties with supersingular reduction at p to the context of modular forms.

For a character $\chi $ of a finite group G, the number $\chi ^c(1)={[G:{\textrm {ker}}\chi ]}/{\chi (1)}$ is called the co-degree of $\chi $ . A finite group G is an ${\textrm {NDAC}} $ -group (no divisibility among co-degrees) when $\chi ^c(1) \nmid \phi ^c(1)$ for all irreducible characters $\chi $ and $\phi $ of G with $1< \chi ^c(1) < \phi ^c(1)$ . We study finite groups admitting an irreducible character whose co-degree is a given prime p and finite nonsolvable ${\textrm {NDAC}} $ -groups. Then we show that the finite simple groups $^2B_2(2^{2f+1})$ , where $f\geq 1$ , $\mbox {PSL}_3(4)$ , ${\textrm {Alt}}_7$ and $J_1$ are determined uniquely by the set of their irreducible character co-degrees.

Let R be a commutative ring with identity which is not an integral domain. An ideal I of R is called an annihilating ideal if there exists $r\in R- \{0\}$ such that $Ir=(0)$ . The total graph of nonzero annihilating ideals of R is the graph $\Omega (R)$ whose vertices are the nonzero annihilating ideals of R and two distinct vertices $I,J$ are joined if and only if $I+J$ is also an annihilating ideal of R. We study the strong metric dimension of $\Omega (R)$ and evaluate it in several cases.

Let R be a ring with identity of characteristic two and G a nontrivial torsion group. We show that if the units in the group ring $RG$ are all trivial, then G must be cyclic of order two or three. We also consider the case where R is a commutative ring with identity of odd prime characteristic and G is a nontrivial locally finite group. We show that in this case, if the units in $RG$ are all trivial, then G must be cyclic of order two. These results improve on a result of Herman et al. [‘Trivial units for group rings with G-adapted coefficient rings’, Canad. Math. Bull.48(1) (2005), 80–89].

A subgroup H of a group G is pronormal in G if each of its conjugates $H^g$ in G is conjugate to it in the subgroup $\langle H,H^g\rangle $ ; a group is prohamiltonian if all of its nonabelian subgroups are pronormal. The aim of the paper is to show that a locally soluble group of (regular) cardinality in which all proper uncountable subgroups are prohamiltonian is prohamiltonian. In order to obtain this result, it is proved that the class of prohamiltonian groups is detectable from the behaviour of countable subgroups. Examples are exhibited to show that there are uncountable prohamiltonian groups that do not behave very well. Finally, it is shown that prohamiltonicity can sometimes be detected through the analysis of the finite homomorphic images of a group.

Let G be a finite solvable group and let p be a prime divisor of $|G|$ . We prove that if every monomial monolithic character degree of G is divisible by p, then G has a normal p-complement and, if p is relatively prime to every monomial monolithic character degree of G, then G has a normal Sylow p-subgroup. We also classify all finite solvable groups having a unique imprimitive monolithic character.

For any (Hausdorff) compact group G, denote by $\mathrm{cp}(G)$ the probability that a randomly chosen pair of elements of G commute. We prove that there exists a finite group H such that $\mathrm{cp}(G)= {\mathrm{cp}(H)}/{|G:F|^2}$ , where F is the FC-centre of G and H is isoclinic to F with $\mathrm{cp}(F)=\mathrm{cp}(H)$ whenever $\mathrm{cp}(G)>0$ . In addition, we prove that a compact group G with $\mathrm{cp}(G)>\tfrac {3}{40}$ is either solvable or isomorphic to $A_5 \times Z(G)$ , where $A_5$ denotes the alternating group of degree five and the centre $Z(G)$ of G contains the identity component of G.

We show that every graded ideal of a Leavitt path algebra is graded isomorphic to a Leavitt path algebra. It is known that a graded ideal I of a Leavitt path algebra is isomorphic to the Leavitt path algebra of a graph, known as the generalised hedgehog graph, which is defined based on certain sets of vertices uniquely determined by I. However, this isomorphism may not be graded. We show that replacing the short ‘spines’ of the generalised hedgehog graph with possibly fewer, but then necessarily longer spines, we obtain a graph (which we call the porcupine graph) whose Leavitt path algebra is graded isomorphic to I. Our proof can be adapted to show that, for every closed gauge-invariant ideal J of a graph $C^*$ -algebra, there is a gauge-invariant $*$ -isomorphism mapping the graph $C^*$ -algebra of the porcupine graph of J onto $J.$

Morgan and Parker proved that if G is a group with ${\textbf{Z}(G)} = 1$ , then the connected components of the commuting graph of G have diameter at most $10$ . Parker proved that if, in addition, G is solvable, then the commuting graph of G is disconnected if and only if G is a Frobenius group or a $2$ -Frobenius group, and if the commuting graph of G is connected, then its diameter is at most $8$ . We prove that the hypothesis $Z (G) = 1$ in these results can be replaced with $G' \cap {\textbf{Z}(G)} = 1$ . We also prove that if G is solvable and $G/{\textbf{Z}(G)}$ is either a Frobenius group or a $2$ -Frobenius group, then the commuting graph of G is disconnected.

We say that a subgroup H is isolated in a group G if for each $x\in G$ either $x\in H$ or $\langle x\rangle \cap H={1}$ . We determine the structure of finite p-groups with isolated minimal nonabelian subgroups and finite p-groups with an isolated metacyclic subgroup.

We introduce ‘generalised higher-rank k-graphs’ as a class of categories equipped with a notion of size. They extend not only higher-rank k-graphs, but also the Levi categories introduced by the first author as a categorical setting for graphs of groups. We prove that examples of generalised higher-rank k-graphs can be constructed using Zappa–Szép products of groupoids and higher-rank graphs.

Given a finite group G with a normal subgroup N, the simple graph $\Gamma _{\textit {G}}( \textit {N} )$ is a graph whose vertices are of the form $|x^G|$ , where $x\in {N\setminus {Z(G)}}$ and $x^G$ is the G-conjugacy class of N containing the element x. Two vertices $|x^G|$ and $|y^G|$ are adjacent if they are not coprime. We prove that, if $\Gamma _G(N)$ is a connected incomplete regular graph, then $N= P \times {A}$ where P is a p-group, for some prime p, $A\leq {Z(G)}$ and $\textbf {Z}(N)\not = N\cap \textbf {Z}(G)$ .

We begin the study of Hankel matrices whose entries are logarithmic coefficients of univalent functions and give sharp bounds for the second Hankel determinant of logarithmic coefficients of convex and starlike functions.

Similarly to the Frobenius–Schur indicator of irreducible characters, we consider higher Frobenius–Schur indicators $\nu _{p^n}(\chi ) = |G|^{-1} \sum _{g \in G} \chi (g^{p^n})$ for primes p and $n \in \mathbb {N}$ , where G is a finite group and $\chi $ is a generalised character of G. These invariants give answers to interesting questions in representation theory. In particular, we give several characterisations of groups via higher Frobenius–Schur indicators.

Let V be an infinite-dimensional vector space over a field F and let $I(V)$ be the inverse semigroup of all injective partial linear transformations on V. Given $\alpha \in I(V)$ , we denote the domain and the range of $\alpha $ by ${\mathop {\textrm {dom}}}\,\alpha $ and ${\mathop {\textrm {im}}}\,\alpha $ , and we call the cardinals $g(\alpha )={\mathop {\textrm {codim}}}\,{\mathop {\textrm {dom}}}\,\alpha $ and $d(\alpha )={\mathop {\textrm {codim}}}\,{\mathop {\textrm {im}}}\,\alpha $ the ‘gap’ and the ‘defect’ of $\alpha $ . We study the semigroup $A(V)$ of all injective partial linear transformations with equal gap and defect and characterise Green’s relations and ideals in $A(V)$ . This is analogous to work by Sanwong and Sullivan [‘Injective transformations with equal gap and defect’, Bull. Aust. Math. Soc. 79 (2009), 327–336] on a similarly defined semigroup for the set case, but we show that these semigroups are never isomorphic.

In this paper, we study the structure of finite groups $G=AB$ which are a weakly mutually $sn$ -permutable product of the subgroups A and B, that is, A permutes with every subnormal subgroup of B containing $A \cap B$ and B permutes with every subnormal subgroup of A containing $A \cap B$ . We obtain generalisations of known results on mutually $sn$ -permutable products.

We extend our study of variability regions, Ali et al. [‘An application of Schur algorithm to variability regions of certain analytic functions–I’, Comput. Methods Funct. Theory, to appear] from convex domains to starlike domains. Let $\mathcal {CV}(\Omega )$ be the class of analytic functions f in ${\mathbb D}$ with $f(0)=f'(0)-1=0$ satisfying $1+zf''(z)/f'(z) \in {\Omega }$ . As an application of the main result, we determine the variability region of $\log f'(z_0)$ when f ranges over $\mathcal {CV}(\Omega )$ . By choosing a particular $\Omega $ , we obtain the precise variability regions of $\log f'(z_0)$ for some well-known subclasses of analytic and univalent functions.

A subgroup H of a group G is said to be contranormal in G if the normal closure of H in G is equal to G. In this paper, we consider groups whose nonmodular subgroups (of infinite rank) are contranormal.