A Golod-Shafarevich equality and \(p\)-tower groups (Q841265)

The Golod-Shafarevich inequality is a purely group-theoretic result, relating the generator rank \(d\) and the relation rank \(r\) of an analytic pro-\(p\)-group, which has been widely used to show that some number fields admit infinite \(p\)-class field towers. The most classical form of the inequality is \(r>\frac{d^2}{4}\). In the paper under review the author introduces a set of invariants associated to a finitely generated pro-\(p\)-group, which can be shown to supply an error term in some results leading to the Golod-Shafarevich inequality. More precisely, he defines \(a_n=\mathrm{dim}_{\mathbb F_p} G_n/G_{n+1}\) (where \(G_n=\{g\in G\mid g-1\in I^n(G)\}\) and \(I\) is the augmentation ideal of \(\mathbb F_p[G]\)), \(c_n=\mathrm{dim}_{\mathbb F_p}\mathbb F_p[[G]]/I^n\) and \(e_n\) as the \(\mathbb F_p\)-dimension of the kernel of a map \(J_n\), coming from Fox differential calculus. The main result of the paper is a so-called Golod-Shafarevich equality (Theorem 6), which holds for any \(d\)-generated analytic pro-\(p\)-group and for all \(0\leq t<1\): \[ \sum_{k=2}^\infty r_k t^k - dt +1 =\prod_{n=1}^\infty \left(\frac{1-t^n}{1-t^{np}}\right)^{a_n}+\frac{\sum_{n=1}^\infty e_n t^n}{\sum_{n=1}^\infty c_n t^n}, \] where \(r_k\) is the number of relations of level \(k\) in a minimal presentation for \(G\). If \(K\) is a quadratic imaginary number field, then \(d=r\) and the problem of determining the finiteness of the \(p\)-tower group \(G_K^\infty\) is largely solved: if \(d\leq 1\), \(G_K^\infty\) is finite, if \(d\geq 3\), \(G_K^\infty\) is infinite. In the case \(d=2\), \textit{H. Koch} and \textit{B. B. Venkov} [Astérisque 24-25, 57--67 (1975; Zbl 0335.12021)] proved that if \(G\) is finite then it must be of one of three possible presentation types, and only the first of them is known to actually occur. In the last section of the paper under review, the Golod-Shafarevich equality is used to obtain the bound \(|G|\geq p^{23}\) for groups of the third type, if \(p>7\).