New Lie products for groups and their automorphisms

Abstract

We generalize the common notion of descending and ascending central series. The descending approach determines a naturally graded Lie ring and the ascending version determines a graded module for this ring. We also link derivations of these rings to the automorphisms of a group. This uncovers new structure in 4/5 of the approximately 11.8 million groups of size at most 1000 and beyond that point pertains to at least a positive logarithmic proportion of all finite groups.