Counting Primitive Elements in Free Groups

Abstract

In this paper it is proved that the set of primitive elements of a non-Abelian free group has density zero, i.e. the ratio of primitive elements in increasingly large balls is arbitrarily small. Two notions of density (natural and exponential density) are defined and some of their properties are studied. A class of subsets of the free group (graphical sets) is defined restricting the occurrence of adjacent letters in the reduced word for an element, and the relation between graphical sets and the set of primitive elements is studied and used to prove the above result.