2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 16R10, 16R20, 16R50The algebra Mn(K) of the matrices n × n over a field K can be regarded as a Z-graded algebra. In this paper, it is proved that if K is an infinite field, all the Z-graded polynomial identities of Mn(K) follow from the identities: x = 0, |α(x)| ≥ n, xy = yx, α(x) = α(y) = 0, xyz = zyx, α(x) = −α(y) = α(z ), where α is the degree of the corresponding variable. This is a generalization of a result of Vasilovsky about the Z-graded identities...

∗The first author was partially supported by MURST of Italy; the second author was par- tially supported by RFFI grant 99-01-00233.It was recently proved that any variety of associative algebras over a field of characteristic zero has an integral exponential growth. It is known that a variety V has polynomial growth if and only if V does not contain the Grassmann algebra and the algebra of 2 × 2 upper triangular matrices. It follows that any variety with overpolynomial growth has exponent at least...

We prove a theorem (for arbitrary ring varieties and, in a stronger form, for varieties of associative rings) which basically reduces the problem of a description of varieties with distributive subvariety lattice to the case of algebras over a finite prime field.

This project was partially supported by RFBR, grants 99-01-00233, 98-01-01020 and 00-15-96128.We study the asymptotic behaviour of numerical characteristics of polynomial identities of Lie algebras over a field of characteristic 0. In particular we investigate the colength for the cocharacters of polynilpotent varieties of Lie algebras. We prove that there exist polynilpotent Lie varieties with exponential and overexponential colength growth. We give the exact asymptotics for the colength of a product...