We prove the following version of Milnor's theorem on solvable groups of exponential growth: A finitely generated solvable group which is not polycyclic contains an ascending HNN extension. Consequently, a finitely generated solvable group is ERF iff it is polycyclic.
The main result in this paper is the failure of the finitely generated intersection property (FGIP) of ascending HNN extensions of non-cyclic finite rank free groups. This class of group consists of free-by-cyclic groups and properly ascending HNN extensions of free groups. We also give a sufficient condition for the failure of the FGIP in the context of relative hyperbolicity, we apply this to free-by-cyclic groups of exponential growth.
We study ascending HNN-extensions $G$ of finitely generated free abelian groups: examples of such $G$ include soluble Baumslag-Solitar groups and fundamental groups of orientable prime $3$-manifolds modelled on Sol geometry. In particular, we study the elliptic subgroup $A \leq G$, consisting of all elements that stabilise a point in the Bass-Serre tree of $G$. We consider the density of $A$ with respect to ball counting measures corresponding to finite generating sets of $G$, and we show that $A$ is exponentially negligible in $G$ with respect to such sequences of measures. As a consequence, …
We prove a normal form result for the groupoid of germs generated by PSL(2,C) and the exponential map. As consequences, we generalize a result of Cohen about the group of translations and powers, and prove that the subgroup of Homeo(R,+infinity) generated by the positive affine maps and the exponential map is isomorphic to a HNN-extension.
We provide polynomial lower bounds for residual finiteness of residually finite, finitely generated solvable groups that admit infinite order elements in the Fitting subgroup of strict distortion at least exponential. For this class of solvable groups which include polycyclic groups with a nontrivial exponential radical and the metabelian Baumslag-Solitar groups, we improve the lower bounds found in the literature. Additionally, for the class of residually finite, finitely generated solvable groups of infinite Prüfer rank that satisfy the conditions of our theorem, we provide the first nontriv…
Let $G$ be a connected exponential Lie group and $R$ be the solvable radical of $G$. We describe a condition on $G/R$ under which one can then conclude that $R$ is an exponential Lie group. The condition holds in particular when $G$ is a complex Lie group and this yields a stronger version of a result of Moskowitz and Sacksteder \cite{MS} on the center of a complex exponential Lie group being connected. Along the way we prove a criterion for elements from certain subsets of a solvable Lie group to be exponential, which would be of independent interest.
Goldmann and Russell (2002) initiated the study of the complexity of the equation satisfiability problem in finite groups by showing that it is in P for nilpotent groups while it is NP-complete for non-solvable groups. Since then, several results have appeared showing that the problem can be solved in polynomial time in certain solvable groups of Fitting length two. In this work, we present the first lower bounds for the equation satisfiability problem in finite solvable groups: under the assumption of the exponential time hypothesis, we show that it cannot be in P for any group of Fitting len…
Let $G$ be an acylindrically hyperbolic group and $E$ an exponential equation over $G$. We show that if $E$ is solvable in $G$, then there exists a solution whose components, corresponding to loxodromic elements, can be linearly estimated in terms of lengths of the coefficients of $E$. We give a more precise answer in the case where $G$ is a relatively hyperbolic group. Under some assumption of general character, the solvability and the search problems for exponential equations over $G$ can be reduced to the peripheral subgroups of $G$.
Let $Σ$ be a compact orientable surface of finite type with at least one boundary component. Let $Γ\leq \textup{Mod}(Σ)$ be a non virtually solvable subgroup. We answer a question of Lubotzky by showing that there exists a finite dimensional homological representation $ρ$ of $\textup{Mod}(Σ)$ such that $ρ(Γ)$ is not virtually solvable. We then apply results of Lubotzky and Meiri to show that for any random walk on such a group the probability of landing on a power, or on an element with topological entropy $0$ both decrease exponentially in the length of the walk.
The study of the complexity of the equation satisfiability problem in finite groups had been initiated by Goldmann and Russell (2002) where they showed that this problem is in polynomial time for nilpotent groups while it is NP-complete for non-solvable groups. Since then, several results have appeared showing that the problem can be solved in polynomial time in certain solvable groups $G$ having a nilpotent normal subgroup $H$ with nilpotent factor $G/H$. This paper shows that such normal subgroup must exist in each finite group with equation satisfiability solvable in polynomial time, unless…
Let $G$ be a group containing a nilpotent normal subgroup $N$ with central series $\{N_j\}$, such that each $N_j/N_{j+1}$ is a $\mathbb{F}$-vector space over a field $\mathbb{F}$ and the action of $G$ on $N_j/N_{j+1}$ induced by the conjugation action is $\mathbb{F}$-linear. For $k\in \mathbb N$ we describe a necessary and sufficient condition for all elements from any coset $xN$, $x\in G$, to admit $k$-th roots in $G$, in terms of the action of $x$ on the quotients $N_j/N_{j+1}.$ This yields in particular a condition for surjectivity of the power maps, generalising various results known in sp…
We introduce an obstruction to the existence of a coarse embedding of a given group or space into a hyperbolic group, or more generally into a hyperbolic graph of bounded degree. The condition we consider is "admitting exponentially many fat bigons", and it is preserved by a coarse embedding between graphs with bounded degree. Groups with exponential growth and linear divergence (such as direct products of two groups one of which has exponential growth, solvable groups that are not virtually nilpotent, and uniform higher-rank lattices) have this property and hyperbolic graphs do not, so the fo…
We give a solution to the inverse problem (given a function, find a corresponding group) for large classes of speed, entropy, isoperimetric profile, return probability and $L_p$-compression functions of finitely generated groups of exponential volume growth. For smaller classes, we give solutions among solvable groups. As corollaries, we prove a recent conjecture of Amir on joint evaluation of speed and entropy exponents and we obtain a new proof of the existence of uncountably many pairwise non-quasi-isometric solvable groups, originally due to Cornulier and Tessera. We also obtain a formula …