The rate of escape for random walks on polycyclic and metabelian groups (Q1943330)

The author uses subgroup distortion to determine the rate of escape of a simple random walk on a class of polycyclic groups, and shows that the rate of escape is invariant under changes of generating set for these groups. For metabelian groups, he defines a stronger form of subgroup distortion which applies to non-finitely generated subgroups. Under this hypothesis, he computes the rate of escape for certain random walks on some abelian-by-cyclic groups via a comparison to the toppling of a dissipative abelian sandpile.