Let $F_m$ be a free group with $m$ generators and let $R$ be its normal subgroup such that $F_m/R$ projects onto $\zz$. We give a lower bound for the growth rate of the group $F_m/R'$ (where $R'$ is the derived subgroup of $R$) in terms of the length $ρ=ρ(R)$ of the shortest nontrivial relation in $R$. It follows that the growth rate of $F_m/R'$ approaches $2m-1$ as $ρ$ approaches infinity. This implies that the growth rate of an $m$-generated amenable group can be arbitrarily close to the maximum value $2m-1$. This answers an open question by P. de la Harpe. In fact we prove that such groups can be found already in the class of abelian-by-nilpotent groups as well as in the class of finite extensions of metabelian groups.
We prove that any finitely generated elementary amenable group of zero (algebraic) entropy contains a nilpotent subgroup of finite index or, equivalently, any finitely generated elementary amenable group of exponential growth is of uniformly exponential growth. We also show that 0 is an accumulation point of the set of entropies of elementary amenable groups.
We introduce right generating sets, Cayley graphs, growth functions, types and rates, and isoperimetric constants for left homogeneous spaces equipped with coordinate systems; characterise right amenable finitely right generated left homogeneous spaces with finite stabilisers as those whose isoperimetric constant is $0$; and prove that finitely right generated left homogeneous spaces with finite stabilisers of sub-exponential growth are right amenable, in particular, quotient sets of groups of sub-exponential growth by finite subgroups are right amenable.
The goal of this article is to study results and examples concerning finitely presented covers of finitely generated amenable groups. We collect examples of groups $G$ with the following properties: (i) $G$ is finitely generated, (ii) $G$ is amenable, e.g. of intermediate growth, (iii) any finitely presented group $E$ with a quotient isomorphic to $G$ contains non-abelian free subgroups, or the stronger (iii') any finitely presented group with a quotient isomorphic to $G$ is large.
We consider groups of automorphisms of locally finite trees, and give conditions on its subgroups that imply that they are not elementary amenable. This covers all known examples of groups that are not elementary amenable and act on the trees: groups of intermediate growths and Basilica group, by giving a more straightforward proof. Moreover, we deduce that all finitely generated branch groups are not elementary amenable, which was conjectured by Grigorchuk.
Suppose an amenable group $G$ is acting freely on a simply connected simplicial complex $\tilde X$ with compact quotient $X$. Fix $n \geq 1$, assume $H_n(\tilde X, \mathbb{Z})=0$ and let $(H_i)$ be a Farber chain in $G$. We prove that the torsion of the integral homology in dimension $n$ of $\tilde{X}/H_i$ grows subexponentially in $[G:H_i]$. By way of contrast, if $X$ is not compact, there are solvable groups of derived length 3 for which torsion in homology can grow faster than any given function.
We study growth of 1-cocycles of locally compact groups, with values in unitary representations. Discussing the existence of 1-cocycles with linear growth, we obtain the following alternative for a class of amenable groups G containing polycyclic groups and connected amenable Lie groups: either G has no quasi-isometric embedding into Hilbert space, or G admits a proper cocompact action on some Euclidean space. On the other hand, noting that almost coboundaries (i.e. 1-cocycles approximable by bounded 1-cocycles) have sublinear growth, we discuss the converse, which turns out to hold for amenab…
We study the growth of torsion in the abelianizations of finite index subgroups in finitely generated metabelian groups. This complements earlier work of Kar, Kropholler and the author which covered the finitely presented amenable groups.
We define the notion of rough Cayley graph for compactly generated locally compact groups in terms of quasi-actions. We construct such a graph for any compactly generated locally compact group using quasi-lattices and show uniqueness up to quasi-isometry. A class of examples is given by the Cayley graphs of cocompact lattices in compactly generated groups. As an application, we show that a compactly generated group has polynomial growth if and only if its rough Cayley graph has polynomial growth (same for intermediate and exponential growth). Moreover, a unimodular compactly generated group is…
We show that every group $H$ of at most exponential growth with respect to some left invariant metric admits a bi-Lipschitz embedding into a finitely generated group $G$ such that $G$ is amenable (respectively, solvable, satisfies a non-trivial identity, elementary amenable, of finite decomposition complexity, etc.) whenever $H$ is. We also discuss some applications to compression functions of Lipschitz embeddings into uniformly convex Banach spaces, Følner functions, and elementary classes of amenable groups.
We show that for every integer $d$, there is a constant $N(d)$ such that if $K$ is any field and $F$ is a finite subset of $GL_d(K)$, which generates a non amenable subgroup, then $F^{N(d)}$ contains two elements, which freely generate a non abelian free subgroup. This improves the original statement of the Tits alternative. It also implies a growth gap and a co-growth gap for non-amenable linear groups, and has consequences about the girth and uniform expansion of small sets in finite subgroups of $GL_d(\Bbb{F}_q)$ as well as other diophantine properties of non-discrete subgroups of Lie group…
We prove a new weak mean ergodic theorem (Theorem A) for 1-cocycles associated to weakly mixing representations of amenable groups. Let $G$ be a finitely generated, discrete, amenable group $G$ which admits a controlled Folner sequence. We use Theorem A to deduce that any affine action $G\ca^T \Cal H$ on Hilbert space with weakly mixing linear part admits a sequence of almost fixed points (Theorem B). Specializing to the case that $G$ is a finitely generated group of polynomial growth, we show that convex combinations of averages of the associated 1-cocycle over $n$-balls provide a sequence of…
In this note we show that if $G$ is a solvable group acting on the line, and if there is $T\in G$ having no fixed points, then there is a Radon measure $μ$ on the line quasi-invariant under $G$. In fact, our method allows for the same conclusion for $G$ inside a class of groups that is closed under extensions and contains all solvable groups and all groups of subexponential growth.
Dynamic asymptotic dimension growth for group actions and groupoids
East China Normal University（华东师范大学）；Sichuan University（四川大学）；Shaanxi Normal University（陕西师范大学）；Shanghai University of International Business and Economics（上海对外经贸大学）
We give sufficient conditions for when groups generated by automata in a class $\mathcal{C}$ of transducers, which contains the class of reset automata transducers, have infinite order. As a consequence we also demonstrate that if a group generated by an automata in $\mathcal{C}$ is infinite, then it contains a free semigroup of rank at least 2. This gives a new proof, in the context of groups generated by automaton in $\mathcal{C}$, of a result of Chou showing that finitely generated elementary amenable groups either have polynomial growth or contain a free semigroup of rank at least 2.
The exponential growth rate of non polynomially growing subgroups of $GL_d$ is conjectured to admit a uniform lower bound. This is known for non-amenable subgroups, while for amenable subgroups it is known to imply the Lehmer conjecture from number theory. In this note, we show that it is equivalent to the Lehmer conjecture. This is done by establishing a lower bound for the entropy of the random walk on the semigroup generated by the maps $x\mapsto λ\cdot x\pm 1$, where $λ$ is an algebraic number. We give a bound in terms of the Mahler measure of $λ$. We also derive a bound on the dimension o…
We show that amenability of a group acting by homeomorphisms can be deduced from a certain local property of the action and recurrency of the orbital Schreier graphs. This covers amenability of a wide class groups, the amenability of which was an open problem, as well as unifies many known examples to one general proof. In particular, this includes Grigorchuk's group, Basilica group, the full topological group of Cantor minimal system, groups acting on rooted trees by bounded automorphisms, groups generated by finite automata of linear activity growth, groups that naturally appear in holomorph…
The connective constant $μ(G)$ of an infinite transitive graph $G$ is the exponential growth rate of the number of self-avoiding walks from a given origin. The relationship between connective constants and amenability is explored in the current work. Various properties of connective constants depend on the existence of so-called 'graph height functions', namely: (i) whether $μ(G)$ is a local function on certain graphs derived from $G$, (ii) the equality of $μ(G)$ and the asymptotic growth rate of bridges, and (iii) whether there exists a terminating algorithm for approximating $μ(G)$ to a give…
We show that if $H$ is a quasiconvex subgroup of infinite index in a non-elementary hyperbolic group $G$ then the Schreier coset graph $X$ for $G$ relative to $H$ is non-amenable (that is, $X$ has positive Cheeger constant). We present some corollaries regading the Martin boundary and Martin compactification of $X$ and the co-growth of $H$ in $G$.
We show that every Grigorchuk group $G_ω$ embeds in (the commutator subgroup of) the topological full group of a minimal subshift. In particular, the topological full group of a Cantor minimal system can have subgroups of intermediate growth, a question raised by Grigorchuk; it can also have finitely generated infinite torsion subgroups, as well as residually finite subgroups that are not elementary amenable, answering questions of Cornulier. By estimating the word-complexity of this subshift, we deduce that every Grigorchuk group $G_ω$ can be embedded in a finitely generated simple group that…
We study norm convergence and summability of Fourier series in the setting of reduced twisted group $C^*$-algebras of discrete groups. For amenable groups, Følner nets give the key to Fejér summation. We show that Abel-Poisson summation holds for a large class of groups, including e.g. all Coxeter groups and all Gromov hyperbolic groups. As a tool in our presentation, we introduce notions of polynomial and subexponential H-growth for countable groups w.r.t. proper scale functions, usually chosen as length functions. These coincide with the classical notions of growth in the case of amenable gr…
A locally compact group $G$ is called Hermitian if the spectrum $\text{Sp}_{L^1(G)}(f)\subseteq\mathbb R$ for every $f\in L^1(G)$ satisfying $f=f^*$, and called quasi-Hermitian if $\text{Sp}_{L^1(G)}(f)\subseteq\mathbb R$ for every $f\in C_c(G)$ satisfying $f=f^*$. We show that every quasi-Hermitian locally compact group is amenable. This, in particular, confirms the long-standing conjecture that every Hermitian locally compact group is amenable, a problem that has remained open since the 1960s. Our approach involves introducing the theory of "spectral interpolation of triple Banach $*$-algebr…
We show that free Burnside groups of sufficiently large odd exponent are non--amenable in a certain strong sense, more precisely, their left regular representations are isolated from the trivial representation uniformly on finite generating sets. This result is applied to the solution of a strong version of the von Neumann -- Day problem concerning amenability of groups without non--abelian free subgroups. As another consequence, we obtain that the above--mentioned groups are of uniform exponential growth.
The firefighter game problem on locally finite connected graphs was introduced by Bert Hartnell. The game on a graph $G$ can be described as follows: let $f_n$ be a sequence of positive integers; an initial fire starts at a finite set of vertices; at each (integer) time $n\geq 1$, $f_n$ vertices which are not on fire become protected, and then the fire spreads to all unprotected neighbors of vertices on fire; once a vertex is protected or is on fire, it remains so for all time intervals. The graph $G$ has the \emph{$f_n$-containment property} if every initial fire admits an strategy that prote…
We prove an inequality, valid on any finitely generated group with a fixed finite symmetric generating set, involving the growth of successive balls, and the average length of an element in a ball. It generalizes recent improvements of the Coulhon Saloff-Coste inequality. We reformulate the inequality in terms of the Følner function; in the case the finitely generated group is amenable with exponential growth, this allows us to express the best possible (outer) constant in the Coulhon Saloff-Coste isoperimetric inequality with the help of a formula involving the growth rate and the asymptotic …
We give lower and upper bounds for the separation profile (introduced by Benjamini, Schramm & Timár) for various graphs using the isoperimetric profile, growth and Hilbertian compression. For graphs which have polynomial isoperimetry and growth, we show that the separation profile $\mathrm{Sep}(n)$ is also bounded by powers of $n$. For many amenable groups, we show a lower bound in $n/ \log(n)^a$ and, for any group which has a non-trivial compression exponent in an $L^p$-space, an upper bound in $n/ \log(n)^b$. We show that solvable groups of exponential growth cannot have a separation profile…
In [B] Bowen defined the growth rate of an endomorphism of a finitely generated group and related it to the entropy of a map $f:M \mapsto M$ on a compact manifold. In this note we study the purely group theoretic aspects of the growth rate of an endomorphism of a finitely generated group. We show that it is finite and bounded by the maximum length of the image of a generator. An equivalent formulation is given that ties the growth rate of an endomorphism to an increasing chain of subgroups. We then consider the relationship between growth rate of an endomorphism on a whole group and the growth…
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 $p$.
Let G be a group acting cocompactly without inversion on a tree X, with all vertex and edge stabilizers isomorphic to the same free abelian group Z^n. We prove that G has the Haagerup Property if and only if G is weakly amenable, and we give a necessary and sufficient condition for this to happen. In particular, denoting by d the rank of the fundamental group of the graph X modded out by G, we deduce that G has the Haagerup Property if either d=0, d=1, or n=1. In these three cases, we show that the L^p-compression rate of G is 1, and that its equivariant L^p-compression rate is max{1/p,1/2} (p…
We prove that there is a gap between $\sqrt{2}$ and $(1+\sqrt{5})/2$ for the exponential growth rate of free products $G=A*B$ not isomorphic to the infinite dihedral group. For amalgamated products $G=A*_C B$ with $([A:C]-1)([B:C]-1)\geq2$, we show that lower exponential growth rate than $\sqrt{2}$ can be achieved by proving that the exponential growth rate of the amalgamated product $\mathrm{PGL}(2,\mathbb{Z})\cong (C_2\times C_2) *_{C_2} D_6$ is equal to the unique positive root of the polynomial $z^3-z-1$. This answers two questions by Avinoam Mann [The growth of free products, Journal of A…
We prove a general version of the amenability conjecture in the unified setting of a Gromov hyperbolic group G acting properly cocompactly either on its Cayley graph, or on a CAT(-1)-space. Namely, for any subgroup H of G, we show that H is co-amenable in G if and only if their exponential growth rates (with respect to the prescribed action) coincide. For this, we prove a quantified, representation-theoretical version of Stadlbauer's amenability criterion for group extensions of a topologically transitive subshift of finite type, in terms of the spectral radii of the classical Ruelle transfer …
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 exhibit a regular language of geodesics for a large set of elements of $BS(1,n)$ and show that the growth rate of this language is the growth rate of the group. This provides a straightforward calculation of the growth rate of $BS(1,n)$, which was initially computed by Collins, Edjvet and Gill in [5]. Our methods are based on those we develop in [8] to show that $BS(1,n)$ has a positive density of elements of positive, negative and zero conjugation curvature, as introduced by Bar-Natan, Duchin and Kropholler in [1].
We define a large class of abstract Coxeter groups, that we call $\infty$--spanned, and for which the word growth rate and the geodesic growth rate appear to be Perron numbers. This class contains a fair amount of Coxeter groups acting on hyperbolic spaces, thus corroborating a conjecture by Kellerhals and Perren. We also show that for this class the geodesic growth rate strictly dominates the word growth rate.
The Cohn-Umans group-theoretic approach to matrix multiplication suggests embedding matrix multiplication into group algebra multiplication, and bounding $ω$ in terms of the representation theory of the host group. This framework is general enough to capture the best known upper bounds on $ω$ and is conjectured to be powerful enough to prove $ω= 2$, although finding a suitable group and constructing such an embedding has remained elusive. Recently it was shown, by a generalization of the proof of the Cap Set Conjecture, that abelian groups of bounded exponent cannot prove $ω= 2$ in this framew…
For $M$ $ω$-categorical and stable, we investigate the growth rate of $M$, i.e. the number of orbits of $Aut(M)$ on $n$-sets, or equivalently the number of $n$-substructures of $M$ after performing quantifier elimination. We show that monadic stability corresponds to a gap in the spectrum of growth rates, from slower than exponential to faster than exponential. This allows us to give a nearly complete description of the spectrum of slower than exponential growth rates (without the assumption of stability), confirming some longstanding conjectures of Cameron and Macpherson and proving the exist…
