Rational growth and degree of commutativity of graph products (Q1712487)

Let \(G\) be a group with a finite generating set \(X\). As usually, \(B_{G, X}(n)=\{g\in G \mid \ell _{X}(g)\leq n\}\) and \(S_{G,X}(n)=\{ g\in G \mid \ell _{X}(g)= n\}\) denote the ball and the sphere of radius \(n\) and \(\ell _{X}(g)\) denotes the length of the element \(g\in G\) with respect the generating set \(X\). A group \(G\) is said to have exponential growth if \(\liminf_{(n\rightarrow \infty ) }\frac{\log \mid B_{G,X}(n)\mid}{\log n}> 0 \) and is said to have polynomial growth of degree \(d\) if \(d=\limsup_{(n\rightarrow \infty ) }\frac{\log \mid S_{G,X}(n)\mid}{\log n}< \infty \). The spherical growth series of a group \(G\) with respect the generating set \(X\) is defined by \(s_{G,X}(t)=\sum _{g\in G}t^{\ell _{X}(g)}=\sum _{n=0}^{\infty }|S_{G,X}(n)| t^{n}\). In case \(s_{G,X}(t)\) is a rational function (a ratio of two polynomials), the group \(G\) is said to have rational growth with respect to the generating set \(X\). Although a group has exponential or polynomial growth it is independent of the generating set \(X\), in general having rational growth depends on \(X\) (for example see in [\textit{M. Stoll}, Invent. Math. 126, No. 1, 85--109 (1996; Zbl 0869.20018)]). In the present paper, the following is proved: Theorem 1. Let \(G\) be an infinite group with a finite generating set \(X\) such that \(s_{G,X}(t)\) is a rational function. Then there exist constants \(\alpha \in \mathbb{Z}_{\geq 0}\), \(\lambda \in [0,\infty )\) and \(D> C > 0\) such that \(Cn^{\alpha }\lambda ^{n}\leq S_{G,X}(n)\leq Dn^{\alpha }\lambda ^{n}\) for all \(n\geq 1\). This theorem agrees with the result for hyperbolic groups (see [\textit{M. Gromov}, in: Essays in group theory, Publ., Math. Sci. Res. Inst. 8, 75--263 (1987; Zbl 0634.20015)]) that if \(G\) is a hyperbolic group with a finite generating set \(Χ\), then \(s_{G,X}(t)\) is rational. In the sequel, this theorem is used for a calculation of the degree of commutativity of a graph product group. Let \(\Gamma \) be a finite simple (undirected) graph where to each vertex \(v\in V(\Gamma )\) a non trivial group \(H_{v}\) is assigned. The graph product group \(G(\Gamma,H)\) consists of words with letters from \(H_{v}\), \(v\in V(\Gamma )\) in which the elements of \(H_{v}\) and \(H_{u}\), \(v\not =u\), commute whenever \(v\) and \(u\) are the endpoints of an edge of \(\Gamma\). For each \(v\in V(\Gamma )\) let \(X_{v}\) be a generating set of the corresponding \(H_{v}\) and \(X=\bigcup _{v\in V(\Gamma )}X_{v}\). In [\textit{I. M. Chiswell}, Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 26, No. 3, 268--272 (1994; Zbl 0834.20027)], it is proved that if \(s_{H_{v}, X_{v}}(t)\) is rational for all \(v\in V(\Gamma )\), then \(s_{G(\Gamma, H), X}(t)\) is rational. Definition 1. Let \(G\) be a group and \(X\) a finite generating set of \(G\). The degree of commutativity for \(G\) with respect to \(X\) is defined as \[\operatorname{dc}_{X}(G)=\limsup _ {(n \rightarrow \infty ) }\frac{|\{(x,y)\in B_{G,X}(n)^{2}:[x,y]=1\,\}|}{|B_{G,X}(n)| ^{2}}= \limsup_ {(n \rightarrow \infty ) }\frac{\sum _{x\in B_{G,X}(n)} |C_{G}(x)\cap B_{G,X}(n)|}{|B_{G,X}(n)|^{2}},\] where \(C_{G}(g)\) is the centralizer of \(g\in G\). Definition 2. Let \(G\) be a group with a finite generating set \(X\). The pair \((G,X)\) is a rational pair with small centralizers if the following two conditions hold: \begin{itemize} \item[(i)] \(s_{H,X}(t)\) is rational. \item[(ii)] There exist constants \(P\), \(\beta \), positive integers, such that \(|C_{G}(g)\cap B_{G,X}(n)| \leq P \beta ^{n}\), for all \(n\geq 1 \) and all non-trivial \(g\in G\). \end{itemize} Theorem 2. Let \(\Gamma \) be a finite simple graph, and for each vertex \(v\in V(\Gamma )\), let \((H_{v},X_{v})\) be a rational pair with small centralizers. Suppose that \(G(\Gamma ,H)\) has exponential growth, and let \(X=\cup _{v\in V(\Gamma })X_{v}\). Then \(\operatorname{dc}_{X}(G(\Gamma, H))=0\). This theorem is consistent with Conjecture 1.6 in [\textit{Y. Antolín} et al., Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 145, No. 2, 479--485 (2017; Zbl 1380.20064)].