Indicability, residual finiteness, and simple subquotients of groups acting on trees (Q1757335)

In this article, the authors establish three independent results concerning groups acting on trees and lattices in (products of) totally disconnected locally compact (t.d.l.c.) groups, and thereby answer questions of D. Wise and C. Reid. Let \(\Gamma\) be a graph and \(G\) a group that acts on \(\Gamma\) by automorphisms. The local action of \(G\) at a vertex \(v\in V(\Gamma)\) is the permutation group \(F(v)\le\mathrm{Sym}(E(v))\) on the set of edges \(E(v)\) issuing from \(v\) that is induced by the action of the vertex stabiliser of \(v\) in \(G\). Analysing \(G\) in terms of the permutation groups \(F(v)\) has a successful history. Given a permutation group \(F\le\mathrm{Sym}(\Omega)\), let \(F^{+}\) denote the subgroup of \(F\) generated by point stabilisers. The first result states that topological groups acting continuously and cocompactly on certain infinite trees \(T\) in such a way that \(F(v)^{+}\) is intransitive for every \(v\), virtually maps onto \(\mathbb{Z}\). This contrasts simple groups due to \textit{M. Burger} and \textit{S. Mozes} [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 92, 113--150 (2000; Zbl 1007.22012), Prop. 3.2.1], for which \(F(v)^{+}\) is transitive, and applies for example when \(F(v)\) is nilpotent. The authors apply this result to show that suitable lattices in products of the form \(\mathrm{Aut}(T)\times H\) for a compactly generated t.d.l.c. group \(H\) with trivial amenable radical are not residually finite, including \textit{D. T. Wise}'s lattice [Comment. Math. Helv. 82, No. 4, 683--724 (2007; Zbl 1142.20025), Example 4.1]. Finally, the authors show that every Burger-Mozes universal group \(\mathrm{U}(F)\) acting on the \(d\)-regular tree with local action \(F\le\mathrm{Sym}(d)\) satisfying that \(F^{+}\) is non-trivial admits a large subquotient in the class \(\mathcal{S}\) of non-discrete t.d.l.c. groups that are topologically simple and compactly generated. Previously, this was only certain when \(F^{+}\) is transitive.