On conjugacy of GGS-groups (Q2414557)

This paper identifies the conjugacy classes, and the isomorphism classes, of Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki groups acting on the \(p\)-adic tree \(T\). Now a Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki group is generated by two automorphisms of the \(p\)-adic tree: a rooted automorphism \(a\) which cyclically permutes the \(p\) maximal subtrees, and an automorphism \(b\) recursively defined according to a vector \(\mathbf{e}=(e_1,\ldots,e_{p-1})\). A much used result concerning Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki groups (for instance in proving branchness), is that every such group is conjugate to a Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki group with defining vector having 1 as the first component. The main result of the paper settles the question of completely describing the conjugacy classes of the Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki groups. The author proves that two Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki groups are conjugate in \(\Aut(T)\) if and only if their defining vectors can be transformed into one another by multiplication of an integer modulo \(p\) and by certain reorderings of the components of the vector. It is also shown that for Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki groups, being conjugate is equivalent to being isomorphic. As an application of these results, the number of isomorphism classes of the Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki groups are computed. The early results of the paper are also proved in greater generality for generalized Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki-groups, which are analogous groups where the subgroup generated by the rooted automorphisms corresponds to a given transitive subgroup of the symmetric group on \(p\) elements.