Abstract

The role played by the symmetric structure of a group of finite Morley rank without involutions in the proof by contradiction of Frécon 2018 was put in evidence in Poizat 2018; indeed, this proof consists in the construction of a symmetric space of dimension two (“a plane”), and then in showing that such a plane cannot exist.To a definable symmetric subset of such a group are associated symmetries and transvections, that we undertake here to study in the abstract, without mentioning a group envelopping them. This leads us to consider axiomatically defined structures that we callsymmetrons(preferably todyadic symmetric setsas was done in Lawson & Lim 2004).Glauberman's$Z^*$-Theorem allows to elucidate completely the structure of the finite symmetrons: each of them is isomorphic to the set of symmetries associated to a symmetric subspace of a finite group without involutions, which is far from being uniquely determined. In fact, there exist non-isomorphic finite groups which have the same symmetries, and also finite symmetrons which are not isomorphic to the symmetries of a group.The situation is not so clear in the case of symmetrons of finite Morley rank, or even algebraic, which are the main objects of study of this paper. But in spite of the fact that a symmetron be a structure much weaker that a group, we can extend to symmetrons some well-known results concerning groups of finite Morley rank: chain condition, decomposition into connected components, characterisation of the generic definable subsets, elliptic generation, etc. These properties are new even in the case of a symmetric subspace of a group, and allow to bypass the computations made by Frécon during the construction of his paradoxical plane.Moreover, assuming the Algebricity Conjecture, we generalize Glauberman's Theorem to the finite Morley rank context.