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 show that the compressed word problem in a finitely-generated fully residually free group (F -group) is decidable in polynomial time, and use the result to show that the word problem in the automorphism group of such a group is decidable in polynomial time.
It is shown that for graph groups (right-angled Artin groups) the conjugacy problem as well as a restricted version of the simultaneous conjugacy problem can be solved in polynomial time even if input words are represented in a compressed form. As a consequence it follows that the word problem for the outer automorphism group of a graph group can be solved in polynomial time.
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 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.
This article studies the complexity of the word problem in groups of automorphisms of subshifts. We show in particular that for any Turing degree, there exists a subshift whose automorphism group contains a subgroup whose word problem has exactly this degree.
We show that the following problems are decidable in a rank 2 free group F_2: does a given finitely generated subgroup H contain primitive elements? and does H meet the orbit of a given word u under the action of G, the group of automorphisms of F_2? Moreover, decidability subsists if we allow H to be a rational subset of F_2, or alternatively if we restrict G to be a rational subset of the set of invertible substitutions (a.k.a. positive automorphisms). In higher rank, we show the decidability of the following weaker problem: given a finitely generated subgroup H, a word u and an integer k, d…
It was shown by Lubotzky in 2014 that automorphism invariant subsets of finite simple groups which contain identity are always word images. In this article, we study word maps on finite nilpotent groups and show that for arbitrary finite groups, the number of automorphism invariant subsets containing identity which are not word images, referred to as word image impostors, may be arbitrarily larger than the number of actual word images. In the course of it, we construct a $2$-exhaustive set of word maps on nilpotent groups of class $2$ and demonstrate its minimality in some cases.
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.
We show that word hyperbolicity of automorphism groups of graph products $G_Γ$ and of Coxeter groups $W_Γ$ depends strongly on the shape of the defining graph $Γ$. We also characterized those $Aut(G_Γ)$ and $Aut(W_Γ)$ in terms of $Γ$ that are virtually free.
Let $F_n$ be a free group of rank $n$. In this paper we discuss three algorithmic problems related to automorphisms of $F_2$. A word $u$ of $F_n$ is called positive if $u$ does not have negative exponents. A word $u$ in $F_n$ is called potentially positive if $ϕ(u)$ is positive for some automorphism $ϕ$ of $F_n$. We prove that there is an algorithm to decide whether or not a given word in $F_2$ is potentially positive, which gives an affirmative solution to problem F34a in [1] for the case of $F_2$. Two elements $u$ and $v$ in $F_n$ are said to be boundedly translation equivalent if the ratio …
We solve the Whitehead problem for automorphisms, monomorphisms and endomorphisms in $\ZZ^m \times F_n$ after giving an explicit description of each of these families of transformations.
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 i…
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.
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 prove that the unitriangular automorphism group of a free group of rank $n$ has a faithful representation by matrices over a field, or in other words, it is a linear group, if and only if $n \leq 3.$ Thus, we have completed a description of relatively free groups with linear the unitriangular automorphism groups. This description was initiated by Erofeev and the author in \cite{Erofeev}, where proper varieties of groups have been considered.
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…
We prove that numerous negatively curved simply connected locally compact polyhedral complexes, admitting a discrete cocompact group of automorphisms, have automorphism groups which are locally compact, uncountable, non linear and virtually simple. Examples include hyperbolic buildings, Cayley graphs of word hyperbolic Coxeter systems, and generalizations of cubical complexes, that we call even polyhedral complexes. We use tools introduced by Tits in the case of automorphism groups of trees, and Davis-Moussong's geometric realisation of Coxeter systems.
We find polynomial-time solutions to the word problem for free-by-cyclic groups, the word problem for automorphism groups of free groups, and the membership problem for the handlebody subgroup of the mapping class group. All of these results follow from observing that automorphisms of the free group strongly resemble straight line programs, which are widely studied in the theory of compressed data structures. In an effort to be self-contained we give a detailed exposition of the necessary results from computer science.
Let $F(p)$, $p\ge2$ be the family of generalized Thompson's groups. Here F(2) is the famous Richard Thompson's group usually denoted by $F$. We find the growth rate of the monoid of positive words in $F(p)$ and show that it does not exceed $p+1/2$. Also we describe new normal forms for elements of $F(p)$ and, using these forms, we find a lower bound for the growth rate of $F(p)$ in its natural generators. This lower bound asymptotically equals $(p-1/2)\log_2 e+1/2$ for large values of $p$.
For any choice of a basis $\cal A$ the free group $F_N$ of finite rank $N \geq 2$ can be canonically identified with the set $F(\cal A)$ of reduced words in $\cal A\cup \cal A^{-1}$. However, such a word $w \in F(\cal A)$ admits a second interpretation, namely as cylinder $C^1_w \subset \partial F_N$. The subset of $\partial F_N$ defined by $C^1_w$ depends not only on the element of $F_N$ given by the word $w$, but also on the chosen basis $\cal A$. In particular one has in general, for $Φ\in \Aut(F_N)$: $$Φ(C^1_w) \neq C^1_{Φ(w)}$$ Indeed, the image of a cylinder under an automorphism $Φ\in \…
We describe some of the geometric properties of the automorphism group Aut(F) of Thompson's group F. We give realizations of Aut(F) geometrically via periodic tree pair diagrams, which lead to natural presentations and give effective methods for estimating the word length of elements. We study some natural subgroups of Aut(F) and their metric properties. In particular, we show that the subgroup of inner automorphisms of F is at least quadratically distorted in Aut(F), whereas other subgroups of Aut(F) isomorphic to F are undistorted.
We prove that even Coxeter groups, whose Coxeter diagrams contain no (4,4,2) triangles, are conjugacy separable. In particular, this applies to all right-angled Coxeter groups or word hyperbolic even Coxeter groups. For an arbitrary Coxeter group W, we also study the relationship between Coxeter generating sets that give rise to the same collection of parabolic subgroups. As an application we show that if an automorphism of W preserves the conjugacy class of every sufficiently short element then it is inner. We then derive consequences for the outer automorphism groups of Coxeter groups.
A subset of a group is characteristic if it is invariant under every automorphism of the group. We study word length in fundamental groups of closed hyperbolic surfaces with respect to characteristic generating sets consisting of a finite union of orbits of the automorphism group, and show that the translation length of any element with nonzero crossing number is positive, and bounded below by a constant depending only (and explicitly) on a bound on the crossing numbers of generating elements. This answers a question of B. Farb.
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.
We show that there exists a finitely generated group of growth ~f for all functions f:\mathbb{R}\rightarrow\mathbb{R} satisfying f(2R) \leq f(R)^{2} \leq f(ηR) for all R large enough and η\approx2.4675 the positive root of X^{3}-X^{2}-2X-4. This covers all functions that grow uniformly faster than \exp(R^{\log2/\logη}). We also give a family of self-similar branched groups of growth ~\exp(R^α) for a dense set of α\in(\log2/\logη,1).
Let G be any finitely generated infinite group. Denote by K(G) the FC-centre of G, i.e., the subgroup of all elements of G whose centralizers are of finite index in G. Let QI(G) denote the group of quasi-isometries of G with respect to word metric. We observe that the natural homomorphism from the group of automorphisms of G to QI(G) is a monomorphism only if K(G) equals the centre Z(G) of G. The converse holds if K(G)=Z(G) is torsion free. We apply this criterion to many interesting classes of groups.
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.
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…
Let $F_n$ be the free group of rank $n$ with free basis $X=\{x_1,\dots,x_n \}$. A palindrome is a word in $X^{\pm 1}$ that reads the same backwards as forwards. The palindromic automorphism group $ΠA_n$ of $F_n$ consists of those automorphisms that map each $x_i$ to a palindrome. In this paper, we investigate linear representations of $ΠA_n$, and prove that $ΠA_2$ is linear. We obtain conjugacy classes of involutions in $ΠA_2$, and investigate residual nilpotency of $ΠA_n$ and some of its subgroups. Let $IA_n$ be the group of those automorphisms of $F_n$ that act trivially on the abelianisatio…
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 discuss the following question of G. Makanin from ``Kourovka notebook'': does there exist an algorithm to determine is for an arbitrary pair of words $U$ and $V$ of a free group $F_n$ and an arbitrary automorphism $ϕ\in Aut(F_n)$ the equation $ϕ(X) U = V X$ solvable in $F_n$? We give the affirmative answer in the case when an automorphism is virtually inner, i.e. some its non-zero power is an inner automorphism of $F_n$.
We study the dilatation of outer automorphisms of right-angled Artin groups. Given a right-angled Artin group defined on a simplicial graph: $A(Γ) = \langle V | E \rangle$ and an automorphism $ϕ\in Out(A(Γ))$ there is a natural measure of how fast the length of a word of $A(Γ)$ grows after $n$ iterations of $ϕ$ as a function of $n$, which we call the dilatation of $w$ under $ϕ$. We define the dilatation of $ϕ$ as the supremum over dilatations of all $w \in A(Γ)$. Assuming that $ϕ$ is a pure and square map, we show that if the dilatation of $ϕ$ is positive, then either there exists a free abeli…
In this paper, we consider the group Aut$(\mathbb{Q}, \leq)$ of order-automorphisms of the rational numbers, proving a result analogous to a theorem of Galvin's for the symmetric group. In an announcement, Khélif states that every countable subset of Aut$(\mathbb{Q}, \leq)$ is contained in an $N$-generated subgroup of Aut$(\mathbb{Q}, \leq)$ for some fixed $N\in\mathbb{N}$. We show that the least such $N$ is $2$. Moreover, for every countable subset of Aut$(\mathbb{Q}, \leq)$, we show that every element can be given as a prescribed product of two generators without using their inverses. More p…
Let $F_n$ be the free group of a finite rank $n$. We study orbits $Orb_ϕ(u)$, where $u$ is an element of the group $F_n$, under the action of an automorphism $ϕ$. If an orbit like that is finite, we determine precisely what its cardinality can be if $u$ runs through the whole group $F_n$, and $ϕ$ runs through the whole group $Aut(F_n)$. Another problem that we address here is related to Whitehead's algorithm that determines whether or not a given element of a free group of finite rank is an automorphic image of another given element. It is known that the first part of this algorithm (reducing …
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…
We show that the conjugacy problem is solvable in [finitely generated free]-by-cyclic groups, by using a result of O. Maslakova that one can algorithmically find generating sets for the fixed subgroups of free group automorphisms, and one of P. Brinkmann that one can determine whether two cyclic words in a free group are mapped to each other by some power of a given automorphism. The algorithm effectively computes a conjugating element, if it exists. We also solve the power conjugacy problem and give an algorithm to recognize if two given elements of a finitely generated free group are Reideme…
We describe, through the use of Rubin's theorem, the automorphism groups of the Higman-Thompson groups $G_{n,r}$ as groups of specific homeomorphisms of Cantor spaces $\mathfrak{C}_{n,r}$. This continues a thread of research begun by Brin, and extended later by Brin and Guzmán: to characterise the automorphism groups of the `Chameleon groups of Richard Thompson,' as Brin referred to them in 1996. The work here completes the first stage of that twenty-year-old program, containing (amongst other things) a characterisation of the automorphism group of $V$, which was the `last chameleon.' The home…
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…
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…
Full residual finiteness growth of a finitely generated group $G$ measures how efficiently word metric $n$-balls of $G$ inject into finite quotients of $G$. We initiate a study of this growth over the class of nilpotent groups. When the last term of the lower central series of $G$ has finite index in the center of $G$ we show that the growth is precisely $n^b$, where $b$ is the product of the nilpotency class and dimension of $G$. In the general case, we give a method for finding an upper bound of the form $n^b$ where $b$ is a natural number determined by what we call a terraced filtration of …
A group presentation is said to have rational growth if the generating series associated to its growth function represents a rational function. A long-standing open question asks whether the Heisenberg group has rational growth for all finite generating sets, and we settle this question affirmatively. We also establish almost-convexity for all finite generating sets. Previously, both of these properties were known to hold for hyperbolic groups and virtually abelian groups, and there were no further examples in either case. Our main method is a close description of the relationship between word…
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 …