Given an automorphism of a free group $F_n$, we consider the following invariants: $e$ is the number of exponential strata (an upper bound for the number of different exponential growth rates of conjugacy classes); $d$ is the maximal degree of polynomial growth of conjugacy classes; $R$ is the rank of the fixed subgroup. We determine precisely which triples $(e,d,R)$ may be realized by an automorphism of $F_n$. In particular, the inequality $e\le (3n-2)/4}$ (due to Levitt-Lustig) always holds. In an appendix, we show that any conjugacy class grows like a polynomial times an exponential under iteration of the automorphism.
We give an upper bound for the number of ``overlattices'' in the automorphism group of a tree, containing a fixed lattice with index n. For an example of a lattice in the automorphism group of a 2p-regular tree whose quotient is a loop, we obtain a lower bound of the asymptotic behavior as well.
For a fully irreducible automorphism ϕof the free group F_k we compute the asymptotics of the intersection number n \mapsto i(T,T'ϕ^n) for trees T,T' in Outer space. We also obtain qualitative information about the geometry of the Guirardel core for the trees T and T'ϕ^n for n large.
Harary and Palmer announced an enumeration problem of labelled self-complementary graphs at the end of their book (Graphical Enumeration, Academic Press, New York and London, 1973). This paper resolves this problem. A method for solving this problem leads to the derivation of following formulas: (a) A formula on the number of labelled graphs with the given order of automorphism groups of those graphs. (b) A formula on the number of unlabelled graphs with the given order of automorphism groups of those graphs. (c) A formula on the number of labelled self-complementary graphs with the given orde…
In this note we produce examples of outer automorphisms of finitely generated groups which have exotic behaviors in terms of growth of conjugacy classes.
We prove that an outer automorphism of the free group is exponentially growing if and only if it induces an outer automorphism of infinite order of free Burnside groups with sufficiently large odd exponent.
We prove that the mapping torus group $\FN \rtimes_α \Z$ of any automorphism $α$ of a free group $\FN$ of finite rank $n \geq 2$ is weakly hyperbolic relative to the canonical (up to conjugation) family $\mathcal H(α)$ of subgroups of $\FN$ which consists of (and contains representatives of all) conjugacy classes that grow polynomially under iteration of $α$. Furthermore, we show that $\FN \rtimes_α \Z$ is strongly hyperbolic relative to the mapping torus of the family $\mathcal H(α)$. As an application, we use a result of Drutu-Sapir to deduce that $\FN \rtimes_α \Z$ has Rapic Decay.
We generalize a class of groups defined by Rostislav Grigorchuk to a much larger class of groups, and provide upper and lower bounds for their word growth (they are all of intermediate growth) and period growth (under a small additional condition, they are periodic).
We prove that if F is a finitely generated free group and f:F -> F is an automorphism with polynomial growth of degree d, then there exists a characteristic subgroup S < F of finite index such that the induced automorphism of the abelianisation of S also grows polynomially of degree d. The proof is geometric in nature and makes use of improved relative train track representatives.
We show that the horoboundary of outer space for the Lipschitz metric is a quotient of Culler and Morgan's classical boundary, two trees being identified whenever their translation length functions are homothetic in restriction to the set of primitive elements of $F_N$. We identify the set of Busemann points with the set of trees with dense orbits. We also investigate a few properties of the horoboundary of outer space for the backward Lipschitz metric, and show in particular that it is infinite-dimensional when $N\ge 3$. We then use our description of the horoboundary of outer space to derive…
We generalize the combinatorial approaches of Rapaport and Higgins--Lyndon to the Whitehead algorithm. We show that for every automorphism $φ$ of a free group $F$ and every word $u\in F$ there exists a finite multiset of words $S_{u,φ}$ satisfying the following property: For every cyclic word $w$, the number of times $u$ appears as a subword of $φ\left(w\right)$ depends only on the appearances of words in $S_{u,φ}$ as subwords of $w$. We use this fact to construct a faithful representation of $\text{Out}\left(F_{n}\right)$ on an inverse limit of $\mathbb{Z}$-modules, so that each automorphism …
We introduce a quantitative characterization of subgroup alternatives modeled on the Tits alternative in terms of group laws and investigate when this property is preserved under extensions. We develop a framework that lets us expand the classes of groups known to have locally uniform exponential growth to include extensions of either word hyperbolic or right-angled Artin groups by groups with locally uniform exponential growth. From this, we deduce that the automorphism group of a torsion-free one-ended hyperbolic group has locally uniform exponential growth. Our methods also demonstrate that…
Many common finite p-groups admit automorphisms of order coprime to p, and when p is odd, it is reasonably difficult to find finite p-groups whose automorphism group is a p-group. Yet the goal of this paper is to prove that the automorphism group of a finite p-group is almost always a p-group. The asymptotics in our theorem involve fixing any two of the following parameters and letting the third go to infinity: the lower p-length, the number of generators, and p. The proof of this theorem depends on a variety of topics: counting subgroups of a p-group; analyzing the lower p-series of a free gr…
This note addresses some questions that arise in the series of works by Kyoji Saito on the growth functions of graphs. We study "hyperbolike" graphs, which include Cayley graphs of hyperbolic groups. We generalize some well-known results on hyperbolic groups to the hyperbolike setting, including rationality of generating functions, and sharp estimates on the growth rate of vertices. We then apply these results to confirm a conjecture of Saito on the "opposite series", which was originally posed for hyperbolic groups.
It is well-known that the automorphism towers of infinite centreless groups of cardinality kappa terminate in less than (2^{kappa})^+ steps. But an easy counting argument shows that (2^{kappa})^+ is not the best possible bound. However, in this paper, we will show that it is impossible to find an explicit better bound using ZFC.
We study the minimally displaced set of irreducible automorphisms of a free group. Our main result is the co-compactness of the minimally displaced set of an irreducible automorphism with exponential growth $ϕ$, under the action of the centraliser $C(ϕ)$. As a corollary, we get that the same holds for the action of $<ϕ>$ on $Min(ϕ)$. Finally, we prove that the minimally displaced set of an irreducible automorphism of growth rate one is consisted of a single point.
In this paper we look at the automorphisms of the multiplicative group of finite nearfields. We find partial results for the actual automorphism groups. We find counting techniques for the size of all finite nearfields. We then show that these results can be used in order to count the number of near vector spaces of a given dimension over a given nearfield, up to isomorphism.
A criterion for quadratic or higher growth of group automorphisms is established which are represented by graph-of-groups automorphisms with certain well specified properties. As a consequence, it is derived (using results of a previous paper of the author) that every partial Dehn twist automorphism of $\FN$ relative to local Dehn twist automorphisms is either an honest Dehn twist automorphism, or else has quadratic growth.
Study of the dynamics of automorphisms of a group is usually focused on their growth and/or finite orbits, including fixed points. In this paper, we introduce properties of a different kind; using somewhat informal language, we call them metric properties. Two principal characteristics of this kind are called here the "curl" and the "flux"; there seems to be very little correlation between these and the growth of an automorphism, which means they are likely to be an essentially new tool for studying automorphisms. We also observe that our definitions of the curl and flux are sufficiently gener…
We introduce the notion of `core growth rate' for strongly synchronizing transducers. We explore some elementary properties of the core growth rate and give examples of transducers with exponential core growth rate. We conjecture that all strongly synchronizing transducers which generate an automaton group of infinite order have exponential core growth rate. There is a connection to the group of automorphisms of the one-sided shift. More specifically, the results of this article are related to the question of whether or not there can exist infinite order automorphisms of the one-sided shift wi…
Define $QC(n)$ to be the number of quasiplatonic topological actions of the cyclic group $C_n$ on surfaces of genus at least two. We use formulas of Benim and Wootton to give an explicit formula for $QC(n)$. In addition, we relate the number of quasiplatonic topological actions of $C_n$ to the number of regular dessins d'enfants having $C_n$ as a group of automorphisms.
Let $ϕ:G \to G$ be a group endomorphism where $G$ is a finitely generated group of exponential growth, and denote by $R(ϕ)$ the number of twisted $ϕ$-conjugacy classes. Fel'shtyn and Hill \cite{fel-hill} conjectured that if $ϕ$ is injective, then $R(ϕ)$ is infinite. This conjecture is true for automorphisms of non-elementary Gromov hyperbolic groups, see \cite{ll} and \cite {fel:1}. It was showed in \cite {gw:2} that the conjecture does not hold in general. Nevertheless in this paper, we show that the conjecture holds for the Baumslag-Solitar groups $B(m,n)$, where either $|m|$ or $|n|$ is gre…
We derive a recurrence relation for the number of simple vertex-labelled bipartite graphs with given degrees of the vertices and use this result to obtain a new method for computing the growth function of the Artin monoid of type $A_{n-1}$ with respect to the simple elements (permutation braids) as generators. Instead of matrices of size $2^{n-1}\times 2^{n-1}$, we use matrices of size $p(n)\times p(n)$, where $p(n)$ is the number of partitions of $n$.
This paper, which is the last of a series of three papers, studies dynamical properties of elements of $\mathrm{Out}(F_{\tt n})$, the outer automorphism group of a nonabelian free group $F_{\tt n}$. We prove that, for every subgroup $H$ of $\mathrm{Out}(F_{\tt n})$, there exists an element $ϕ\in H$ such that, for every element $g$ of $F_{\tt n}$, the conjugacy class $[g]$ has polynomial growth under iteration of $ϕ$ if and only if $[g]$ has polynomial growth under iteration of every element of $H$.
We obtain sufficient and necessary conditions for the Choquet-Deny theorem to hold in the class of compactly generated totally disconnected locally compact groups of polynomial growth, and in a larger class of totally disconnected generalized $\ov{FC}$-groups. The following conditions turn out to be equivalent when $G$ is a metrizable compactly generated totally disconnected locally compact group of polynomial growth: (i) the Choquet-Deny theorem holds for $G$; (ii) the group of inner automorphisms of $G$ acts distally on $G$; (iii) every inner automorphism of $G$ is distal; (iv) the contracti…
In this paper we define a quantity called the rank of an outer automorphism of a free group which is the same as the index introduced in [D. Gaboriau, A. Jaeger, G. Levitt and M. Lustig, `An index for counting fixed points for automorphisms of free groups', Duke Math. J. 93 (1998) 425-452] without the count of fixed points on the boundary. We proceed to analyze outer automorphisms of maximal rank and obtain results analogous to those in [D.J. Collins and E. Turner, `An automorphism of a free group of finite rank with maximal rank fixed point subgroup fixes a primitive element', J. Pure and App…
Following ideas that go back to Cannon, we show the rationality of various generating functions of growth sequences counting embeddings of convex subgraphs in locally-finite, vertex-transitive graphs with the (relative) falsification by fellow traveler property (fftp). In particular, we recover results of Cannon, of Epstein, Iano-Fletcher and Zwick, and of Calegari and Fujiwara. One of our applications concerns Schreier coset graphs of hyperbolic groups relative to quasi-convex subgroups, we show that these graphs have rational growth, the falsification by fellow traveler property, and the exi…
We prove sharp upper and lower bounds for generalized Calderón's sums associated to frames on LCA groups generated by affine actions of cocompact subgroup translations and general measurable families of automorphisms. The proof makes use of techniques of analysis on metric spaces, and relies on a counting estimate of lattice points inside metric balls. We will deduce as special cases Calderón-type inequalities for families of expanding automorphisms as well as for LCA-Gabor systems.
In this article we prove a conjecture of A. Lubotzky: let G = G_0(K), where K is a local field of characteristic p>5, G_0 is a simply connected, absolutely almost simple K-group of K-rank at least 2. We give the rate of growth of r_x(G) :={H< G| H a lattice in G; vol(G/H)<x}/~, where H_1\simH_2 if and only if there is an abstract automorphism t of G such that H_2 =t(H_1). We also study the rate of subgroup growth s_x(H) of any lattice H in G. As a result we show that these two functions have the same rate of growth which proves Lubotzky's conjecture. Along the way, we also study the rate of gr…
We study the growth rate of the number of maximal arithmetic subgroups of bounded covolumes in a semi-simple Lie group using an extension of the method due to Borel and Prasad.
If a finitely generated torsion free group K has the property that all finitely generated subgroups S of K are either small or have growth constant bounded uniformly away from 1 then a non proper HNN extension G of K, that is a semidirect product of K by the integers, has the same property. Here small means cyclic or, if the automorphism has no periodic conjugacy classes, free abelian of bounded rank.
Let $1 \le r < n$ be integers. We give a proof that the group $\mathop{\mathrm{Aut}}({X_{n}^{\mathbb{N}}, σ_{n}})$ of automorphisms of the one-sided shift on $n$ letters embeds naturally as a subgroup $\mathcal{H}_{n}$ of the outer automorphism group $\mathop{\mathrm{Out}}({G_{n,r}})$ of the Higman-Thompson group $G_{n,r}$. From this, we can represent the elements of $\mathop{\mathrm{Aut}}({X_{n}^{\mathbb{N}}, σ_{n}})$ by finite state non-initial transducers admitting a very strong synchronizing condition. Let $H \in \mathcal{H}_{n}$ and write $|H|$ for the number of states of the minimal tran…
This article is concerned with the representation growth of profinite groups over finite fields. We investigate the structure of groups with uniformly bounded exponential representation growth (UBERG). Using crown-based powers we obtain some necessary and some sufficient conditions for groups to have UBERG. As an application we prove that the class of UBERG groups is closed under split extensions but fails to be closed under extensions in general. On the other hand, we show that the closely related probabilistic finiteness property $PFP_1$ is closed under extensions. In addition, we prove that…
We prove that the growth rate of an endomorphism of a finitely generated nilpotent group equals to the growth rate of induced endomorphism on its abelinization, generalizing the corresponding result for an automorphism in [14]. We also study growth rates of endomorphisms for specific solvable groups, lattices of Sol, providing a counterexample to a known result in [5] and proving that the growth rate is an algebraic number.
We present a normal form for outer automorphisms $ϕ$ of a non-abelian free group $F_N$ which grow quadratically (measured through the maximal growth of conjugacy classes in $F_N$ under iteration of $ϕ$). In analogy to the known normal form for linearly growing automorphisms as efficient Dehn twist, our normal form for $ϕ$ is given in terms of a 2-level Dehn twist on a graph-of-groups $\cal{G}$ with $π_1 {\cal{G}} \cong F_N$, where a conjugacy class of $F_N$ grows at most linearly if and only if it is contained in a vertex group of $\cal{G}$. Our proof is based on earlier work of the second aut…
The generalized Fitting height of a finite group $G$ is the least number $h=h^*(G)$ such that $F^*_h(G)=G$, where the $F^*_i(G)$ is the generalized Fitting series: $F^*_1(G)=F^*(G)$ and $F^*_{i+1}(G)$ is the inverse image of $F^*(G/F^*_{i}(G))$. It is proved that if $G$ admits a soluble group of automorphisms $A$ of coprime order, then $h^*(G)$ is bounded in terms of $h^* (C_G(A))$, where $C_G(A)$ is the fixed-point subgroup, and the number of prime factors of $|A|$ counting multiplicities. The result follows from the special case when $A=\langleφ\rangle$ is of prime order, where it is proved …
We study the automorphism groups of free-by-cyclic groups and show these are finitely generated in the following cases: (i) when defining automorphism has linear growth and (ii) when the rank of the underlying free group has rank at most 3. The techniques we use are actions on trees, including the trees of cylinders due to Guirardel and Levitt, the relative hyperbolicity of free-by-cyclic groups (due to Gautero and Lustig, Ghosh, and Dahmani and Li) and the filtration of the automorphisms of a group preserving a tree, following Bass and Jiang, and Levitt. Our general strategy is to produce an …
We present two quite different algorithms to compute the number of elements in the sphere of radius $n$ of Thompson's group $F$ with standard generating set. The first of these requires exponential time and polynomial space, but additionally computes the number of geodesics and is generalisable to many other groups. The second algorithm requires polynomial time and space and allows us to compute the size of the spheres of radius $n$ with $n \leq 1500$. Using the resulting series data we find that the growth rate of the group is bounded above by $2.62167...$. This is very close to Guba's lower …
The number of maximal independent sets of the n-cycle graph C_n is known to be the nth term of the Perrin sequence. The action of the automorphism group of C_n on the family of these maximal independent sets partitions this family into disjoint orbits, which represent the non-isomorphic (i.e., defined up to a rotation and a reflection) maximal independent sets. We provide exact formulas for the total number of orbits and the number of orbits having a given number of isomorphic representatives. We also provide exact formulas for the total number of unlabeled (i.e., defined up to a rotation) max…
