The Congruence Subgroup Problem for finitely generated Nilpotent Groups

Abstract: The congruence subgroup problem for a finitely generated group

G a m m a

and

G l e q A u t (G a m m a)

asks whether the map

h a t G o A u t (h a t G a m m a)

is injective, or more generally, what is its kernel

C l e f t (G, G a m m a i g h t)

? Here

h a t X

denotes the profinite completion of

X

. In the case

G = A u t (G a m m a)

we denote

C l e f t (G a m m a i g h t) = C l e f t (A u t (G a m m a), G a m m a i g h t)

. Let

G a m m a

be a finitely generated group,

, and

. Denote

A u t^{*} (G a m m a) = e x t r m I m (A u t (G a m m a) o A u t (G a m m a^{*})) l e q G L_{d} (m a t h b b Z)

. In this paper we show that when

G a m m a

is nilpotent, there is a canonical isomorphism

C l e f t (G a m m a i g h t) s i m e q C (A u t^{*} (G a m m a), G a m m a^{*})

. In other words,

C l e f t (G a m m a i g h t)

is completely determined by the solution to the classical congruence subgroup problem for the arithmetic group

A u t^{*} (G a m m a)

. In particular, in the case where

G a m m a = P s i_{n, c}

is a finitely generated free nilpotent group of class

c

on

n

elements, we get that

C (P s i_{n, c}) = C (m a t h b b Z^{(n)}) = e

whenever

n g e q 3

, and

C (P s i_{2, c}) = C (m a t h b b Z^{(2)}) = h a t F_{o m e g a}

= the free profinite group on countable number of generators.

This page was built for publication: The Congruence Subgroup Problem for finitely generated Nilpotent Groups