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Abstract The main results of the paper develop a level theory and establish strong character bounds for finite classical groups, in the case that the centralizer of the element has small order compared to$$|G|$$ $\left|G\right|$in a logarithmic sense. 

It was shown in [10] that that there exist strongly dense free subgroups in any semisimple algebraic group over a large enough field. These are nonabelian free subgroups all of whose subgroups are either cyclic or Zariski-dense. Here we show that the same is true for as long as the transcendence degree of the field is at least 1 in characteristic 0 and transcendence degree at least 2 in positive characteristic. 

In this paper we consider which families of finite simple groups $G$have the property that for each $\mathrm{ϵ<\#comment/>}>0$there exists $N>0$such that, if $|G|\ge <\#comment/>N$and $S,T$are normal subsets of $G$with at least $\mathrm{ϵ<\#comment/>}|G|$elements each, then every non-trivial element of $G$is the product of an element of $S$and an element of $T$. We show that this holds in a strong and effective sense for finite simple groups of Lie type of bounded rank, while it does not hold for alternating groups or groups of the form ${\mathrm{P}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{L}}_n\left(q\right)$where $q$is fixed and $n\to <\#comment/>\mathrm{\infty <\#comment/>}$. However, in the case $S=T$and $G$alternating this holds with an explicit bound on $N$in terms of $\mathrm{ϵ<\#comment/>}$. Related problems and applications are also discussed. In particular we show that, if $w_1,w_2$are non-trivial words, $G$is a finite simple group of Lie type of bounded rank, and for $g\in <\#comment/>G$, $P_{w_1\left(G\right),w_2\left(G\right)}\left(g\right)$denotes the probability that $g_1{g}_2=g$where $g_i\in <\#comment/>w_i\left(G\right)$are chosen uniformly and independently, then, as $|G|\to <\#comment/>\mathrm{\infty <\#comment/>}$, the distribution $P_{w_1\left(G\right),w_2\left(G\right)}$tends to the uniform distribution on $G$with respect to the $L^{\mathrm{\infty <\#comment/>}}$norm. 

Abstract For every integer k there exists a bound $$B=B(k)$$ B = B ( k ) such that if the characteristic polynomial of $$g\in \textrm{SL}_n(q)$$ g ∈ SL n ( q ) is the product of $$\le k$$ ≤ k pairwise distinct monic irreducible polynomials over $$\mathbb {F}_q$$ F q , then every element x of $$\textrm{SL}_n(q)$$ SL n ( q ) of support at least B is the product of two conjugates of g . We prove this and analogous results for the other classical groups over finite fields; in the orthogonal and symplectic cases, the result is slightly weaker. With finitely many exceptions ( p ,  q ), in the special case that $$n=p$$ n = p is prime, if g has order $$\frac{q^p-1}{q-1}$$ q p - 1 q - 1 , then every non-scalar element $$x \in \textrm{SL}_p(q)$$ x ∈ SL p ( q ) is the product of two conjugates of g . The proofs use the Frobenius formula together with upper bounds for values of unipotent and quadratic unipotent characters in finite classical groups.