Coarse approximate subgroups in weak general position and Elekes-Szabó problems for nilpotent groups

The Elekes-Szabó's theorem says very roughly that if a complex irreducible subvariety V of X*Y*Z has ''too many'' intersection with cartesian products of finite sets, then V is in correspondence with the graph of multiplication of an algebraic group G. It was noticed by Breuillard and Wang that the algebraic group G must be abelian. There is a constraint for the finite sets witnessing ''many'' intersections with V, namely a condition called in general position, which plays a key role in forcing the group to be abelian.  In this talk, I will present a result which shows that in the case of the graph of complex algebraic groups, with a weaker general position assumption, nilpotent groups will appear. More precisely, for a connected complex algebraic group G the following are equivalent:

1. The graph of G has ''many'' intersections with finite sets in weak general position;

2. G is nilpotent;

3. The ultrapower of G has a pseudofinite coarse approixmate subgroup in weak general position.

Surprisingly, the proof of the direction from 2 to 3 invokes some form of generic Mordell-Lang theorem for commutative complex algebraic groups.

This is joint work with Martin Bays and Jan Dobrowolski.