Towards super-approximation in positive characteristic

Brian Longo, Alireza Salehi Golsefidy

Published 2019-08-19Version 1

In this note we show that the family of Cayley graphs of a finitely generated subgroup of ${\rm GL}_{n_0}(\mathbb{F}_p(t))$ modulo some admissible square-free polynomials is a family of expanders under certain algebraic conditions. Here is a more precise formulation of our main result. For a positive integer $c_0$, we say a square-free polynomial is $c_0$-admissible if degree of irreducible factors of $f$ are distinct integers with prime factors at least $c_0$. Suppose $\Omega$ is a finite symmetric subset of ${\rm GL}_{n_0}(\mathbb{F}_p(t))$, where $p$ is a prime more than $5$. Let $\Gamma$ be the group generated by $\Omega$. Suppose the Zariski-closure of $\Gamma$ is connected, simply-connected, and absolutely almost simple; further assume that the field generated by the traces of ${\rm Ad}(\Gamma)$ is $\mathbb{F}_p(t)$. Then for some positive integer $c_0$ the family of Cayley graphs ${\rm Cay}(\pi_{f(x)}(\Gamma),\pi_{f(x)}(\Omega))$ as $f$ ranges in the set of $c_0$-admissible polynomials is a family of expanders, where $\pi_{f(t)}$ is the quotient map for the congruence modulo $f(t)$.