A combing is a set of normal forms for a finitely generated group. This article investigates the language-theoretic and geometric properties of combings for nilpotent and polycyclic groups. It is shown that a finitely generated class 2 nilpotent group with cyclic commutator subgroup is real-time combable, as are also all 2 or 3-generated class 2 nilpotent groups, and groups in certain families of nilpotent groups, e.g. the finitely generated Heisenberg groups, groups of unipotent matrices over the integers and the free class 2 nilpotent groups. Further it is shown that any polycyclic-by-finite group embeds in a real-time combable group. All the combings constructed in the article are boundedly asynchronous, and those for nilpotent-by-finite groups have polynomially bounded length functions, of degree equal to the nilpotency class, c. This result verifies a polynomial upper bound on the Dehn functions of those groups of degree c+1.
If $G$ and $H$ are finitely generated residually nilpotent groups, then $G$ and $H$ are in the same nilpotent genus if they have the same lower central quotients (up to isomorphism). A stronger condition is that $H$ is para-$G$ if there exists a monomorphism of $G$ into $H$ which induces isomorphisms between the corresponding quotients of their lower central series. We first consider residually nilpotent groups and find sufficient conditions on the monomorphism so that $H$ is para-$G.$ We then prove that for certain polycyclic groups, if $H$ is para-$G$, then $G$ and $H$ have the same Hirsch l…
The word problem is an old and central problem in (computational) group theory. It is well-known that the word problem is undecidable in general, but decidable for specific types of presentations. Consistent polycyclic presentations are an important class of group presentations with solvable word problem. These presentations play a fundamental role in the algorithmic theory of polycyclic groups. Problems analogous to the word problem arise when computing with other algebraic structures. Various aspects of this topic are considered in the literature. The aim of this paper is to provide a genera…
It is shown that the knapsack problem (introduced by Myasnikov, Nikolaev, and Ushakov) is undecidable in a direct product of sufficiently many copies of the discrete Heisenberg group (which is nilpotent of class 2). Moreover, for the discrete Heisenberg group itself, the knapsack problem is decidable. Hence, decidability of the knapsack problem is not preserved under direct products. It is also shown that for every co-context-free group, the knapsack problem is decidable. For the subset sum problem (also introduced by Myasnikov, Nikolaev, and Ushakov) we show that it belongs to the class NL (n…
A finitely generated group $Γ$ is called strongly scale-invariant if there exists an injective endomorphism $φ: Γ\to Γ$ with the image $φ(Γ)$ of finite index in $Γ$ and the subgroup $\displaystyle \bigcap_{n>0}φ^n(Γ)$ finite. The only known examples of such groups are virtually nilpotent, or equivalently, all examples have polynomial growth. A question by Nekrashevych and Pete asks whether these groups are the only possibilities for such endomorphisms, motivated by the positive answer due to Gromov in the special case of expanding group morphisms. In this paper, we study this question for the …
We introduce a model of random f.g., torsion-free, $2$-step nilpotent groups (in short, $τ_2$-groups). To do so, we show that these are precisely the groups that admit a presentation of the form $ \label{tau2pres_0}\langle A, C \mid [a_i, a_j]= \prod_t {\scriptstyle c_t^{\scriptscriptstyle λ_{t,i,j}}} \ (i< j), \ [A,C]=[C,C]=1\rangle,$ where $A=\{a_1, \dots, a_n\}$, and $C=\{c_1, \dots, c_m\}$. Hence, one may select a random $τ_2$-group $G$ by fixing $A$ and $C$, and then randomly choosing exponents $λ_{t,i,j}$ with $|λ_{t,i,j}|\leq \ell$, for some $\ell$. We prove that, if $m\geq n-1\geq 1$, …
We consider a group-theoretic analogue of the classic subset sum problem. It is known that every virtually nilpotent group has polynomial time decidable subset sum problem. In this paper we use subgroup distortion to show that every polycyclic non-virtually-nilpotent group has NP-complete subset sum problem.
A classical result by K.B. Lee states that every group morphism between almost crystallographic groups is induced by an affine map on the nilpotent Lie group whereon these groups by definition act. It is the main technique for studying morphisms between virtually nilpotent groups, having important applications in fixed point theory, for example as a tool to compute Nielsen numbers for self-maps on infra-nilmanifolds. In this paper we generalize this result to morphisms between virtually polycyclic groups, which are known to act crystallographically by affine transformations on a nilpotent Lie …
In this paper, we consider the conjugacy growth function of a group, which counts the number of conjugacy classes which intersect a ball of radius $n$ centered at the identity. We prove that in the case of virtually polycyclic groups, this function is either exponential or polynomially bounded, and is polynomially bounded exactly when the group is virtually nilpotent. The proof is fairly short, and makes use of the fact that any polycyclic group has a subgroup of finite index which can be embedded as a lattice in a Lie group, as well as exponential radical of Lie groups and Dirichlet's approxi…
We prove that Knapsack problem (KP) is undecidable for any group of nilpotency class two if the number of generators (without torsion) of the derived subgroup is at least 322. This result together with the fact that if KP is undecidable for a subgroup then it undecidable for the whole group allows us extend our result to certain classes of polycyclic groups, linear groups and nilpotent groups of higher nilpotency class.
We show that any soluble group $G$ of type Bredon-$\FP_{\infty}$ with respect to the family of all virtually cyclic subgroups such that centralizers of infinite order elements are of type $\FP_{\infty}$ must be virtually cyclic. To prove this, we first reduce the problem to the case of polycyclic groups and then we show that a polycyclic-by-finite group with finitely many conjugacy classes of maximal virtually cyclic subgroups is virtually cyclic. Finally we discuss refinements of this result: we only impose the property Bredon-$\FP_n$ for some $n \leq 3$ and restrict to abelian-by-nilpotent, …
The solvable Farb growth of a group quantifies how well-approximated the group is by its finite solvable quotients. In this note we present a new characterization of polycyclic groups which are virtually nilpotent. That is, we show that a group has solvable Farb growth which is at most polynomial in $\log(n)$ if and only if the group is polycyclic and virtually nilpotent. We also give new results concerning approximating oriented surface groups by nilpotent quotients. As a consequence of this, we prove that a natural number $C$ exists so that any nontrivial element of the $Ck$th term of the lo…
Let x be an element of a group G. For a positive integer n let E_n(x) be the subgroup generated by all commutators [...[[y,x],x],...,x] over y in G, where x is repeated n times. There are several recent results showing that certain properties of groups with small subgroups E_n(x) are close to those of Engel groups. The present article deals with orderable groups in which, for some n, the subgroups E_n(x) are polycyclic. Let h,n be positive integers and G an orderable group in which E_n(x) is polycyclic with Hirsch length at most h for every x in G. It is proved that there are (h,n)-bounded num…
We prove that the class of nilpotent by finite, solvable by finite, polycyclic by finite, nilpotent of nilpotency class $n$ and supersolvable groups are closed under the formation of the non-abelian tensor product. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the non-abelian tensor product of finitely generated groups to be finitely generated. We prove that central extensions of most finite simple groups have trivial Bogomolov multiplier.
It is well known that any polycyclic group, and hence any finitely generated nilpotent group, can be embedded into $GL_{n}(\mathbb{Z})$ for an appropriate $n\in \mathbb{N}$; that is, each element in the group has a unique matrix representation. An algorithm to determine this embedding was presented in Nickel. In this paper, we determine the complexity of the crux of the algorithm and the dimension of the matrices produced as well as provide a modification of the algorithm presented by Nickel.
Polycyclic groups are natural generalizations of cyclic groups but with more complicated algorithmic properties. They are finitely presented and the word, conjugacy, and isomorphism decision problems are all solvable in these groups. Moreover, the non-virtually nilpotent ones exhibit an exponential growth rate. These properties make them suitable for use in group-based cryptography, which was proposed in 2004 by Eick and Kahrobaei. Since then, many cryptosystems have been created that employ polycyclic groups. These include key exchanges such as non-commutative ElGamal, authentication schemes …
We show that for some absolute (explicit) constant $C$, the following holds for every finitely generated group $G$, and all $d >0$: If there is some $ R_0 > \exp(\exp(Cd^C))$ for which the number of elements in a ball of radius $R_0$ in a Cayley graph of $G$ is bounded by $R_0^d$, then $G$ has a finite index subgroup which is nilpotent (of step $<C^d$). An effective bound on the finite index is provided if "nilpotent" is replaced by 'polycyclic", thus yielding a non-trivial result for finite groups as well.
We exhibit a family of infinite, finitely-presented, nilpotent-by-abelian groups. Each member of this family is a solvable S-arithmetic group that is related to Baumslag-Solitar groups, and everyone of these groups has a quasi-isometry group that is virtually a product of a solvable real Lie group and a solvable p-adic Lie group. In addition, we propose a candidate for a polycyclic group whose quasi-isometry group is a solvable real Lie group, and we introduce a candidate for a quasi-isometrically rigid solvable group that is not finitely presented. We also record some conjectures on the large…
We study the Diophantine problem (decidability of finite systems of equations) in different classes of finitely generated solvable groups (nilpotent, polycyclic, metabelian, free solvable, etc), which satisfy some natural "non-commutativity" conditions. For each group $G$ in one of these classes, we prove that there exists a ring of algebraic integers $O$ that is interpretable in $G$ by finite systems of equations (e-interpretable), and hence that the Diophantine problem in $O$ is polynomial time reducible to the Diophantine problem in $G$. One of the major open conjectures in number theory st…
The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast the class of residually finite groups with the class of equationally Noetherian groups - groups over which every system of coefficient-free equations is equivalent to a finite subsystem. It is easy to construct groups that are residually finite but not equationally Noetherian (e.g. the direct sum of all finite groups) or vice versa (e.g. the additive group $(\mathbb{Q},+)$ of the rationals). However, no explicit examples that are finitely generated seem to appear in the literature. In this paper, we show that among finitely generated groups, the…
We propose a new generalisation of Cayley automatic groups, varying the time complexity of computing multiplication, and language complexity of the normal form representatives. We first consider groups which have normal form language in the class $\mathcal C$ and multiplication by generators computable in linear time on a certain restricted Turing machine model (position-faithful one-tape). We show that many of the algorithmic properties of automatic groups are preserved (quadratic time word problem), prove various closure properties, and show that the class is quite large; for example it incl…
