Fixed points of automorphisms preserving the length of words in free solvable groups. (Q1925808)

Let \(F_n\) be the free group of rank \(n\) freely generated by \(x_1,x_2,\dots,x_n\). If \(w\in F_n\) is a reduced word, then the length \(|w|\) of \(w\) is the number of occurrences of \(x_i^{\pm 1}\) (\(i=1,2,\dots,n\)) in \(w\). Let \(\delta\) an automorphism of \(F_n\), then \(\delta\) `preserves the length' if, for every reduced word \(w\in F_n\), it happens that \(|w^\delta|=|w|\). If \(F_n^{(m)}\) denotes the \(m\)-th term of the derived series of \(F_n\), then the main result of this paper can be summarized as: Let \(\delta\) be a length preserving automorphism of \(F_n\) of prime order \(p\) and without nontrivial fixed point and let \(\sigma\) be the automorphism induced by \(\delta\) on \(G=F_n/F_n^{(m)}\). Then every fixed point of \(\sigma\) in \(G\) has the form \(g\cdot g^\sigma\cdots g^{\sigma^{p-1}}\), where \(g\in G^{(m-1)}=F_n^{(m-1)}/F_n^{(m)}\).