Growth rate for endomorphisms of finitely generated nilpotent groups (Q2208318)

First, we briefly state the main results of this paper. In the paper, for a finitely generated torsion-free nilpotent group \(\pi\) and an endomorphism \(\varphi\) on \(\pi\), the authors describe the growth rate of \(\varphi\) with the induced Lie group homomorphism \(D\) on the Malcev completion of \(\pi\) and the linearization of \(D\). Furthermore, let \(\pi^{\mathrm{ab}}\) be the abelianization of \(\pi\), and \(\varphi_{\mathrm{ab}}\) the homomorphism on \(\pi^{\mathrm{ab}}\) induced by \(\varphi\). Then, the authors show that the growth rate of \(\varphi\) is equal to that of \(\pi^{\mathrm{ab}}\). Here, we explain the main results of the paper more precisely. Let \(\pi\) be a finitely generated group generated by \(S=\{ s_1, \ldots, s_n \}\). Set \(S^{-1}=\{ s_1^{-1}, \ldots, s_n^{-1} \}\). For any \(\gamma \in \pi\), the length of the shortest word in the letters \(S \cup S^{-1}\) which represents \(\gamma\) is called the length of \(\gamma\) with respect to \(S\) and is denoted by \(L(\gamma,S)\). For an endomorphism \(\varphi : \pi \rightarrow \pi\), the growth rate of \(\varphi\) is defined to be \[ \mathrm{GR}(\varphi) := \sup{\{ \displaystyle \limsup_{k \to \infty} L(\varphi^k(\gamma), S)^{1/k} \,|\, \gamma \in \pi \} }. \] Let \(\pi\) be a finitely generated torsion-free nilpotent group, \(G\) its Malcev completion, and \(\mathfrak{G}\) the Lie algebra of \(G\). Any endomorphism \(\varphi : \pi \rightarrow \pi\) uniquely extends to the Lie group endomorphism \(D : G \rightarrow G\). The differential \(D_* : \mathfrak{G} \rightarrow \mathfrak{G}\) of \(D\) is called the linearization of \(D\). Then the authors show the following: Theorem. As notations above, the linearization \(D_*\) can be expressed as a lower triangular block matrix. Furthermore, let \(\{ D_j \}\) be its diagonal blocks. Then, the growth rate of \(\varphi\) is given by \[ \mathrm{GR}(\varphi) = \max{ \{ s(D_j)^{1/j} \mid j \geq 1 \} } \] where \(s(D_j)\) denotes the maximum of the absolute values of the eigenvalues of \(D_j\). From this theorem, it immediately turns out that \(\mathrm{GR}(\varphi)\) is an algebraic integer. The authors also show the following theorem. Theorem. As notations above, \(\mathrm{GR}(\varphi)=\mathrm{GR}(\varphi_{\mathrm{ab}})\). \textit{T. Koberda} [Contemp. Math. 590, 87--99 (2013; Zbl 1321.20029)] showed that the growth rate of an automorphism of a finitely generated nilpotent group is equal to that of the induced automorphism on its abelianization. The authors result in this paper is a generalization of Koberda's result.