Growth tight actions of product groups (Q2630773)

Summary: A group action on a metric space is called growth tight if the exponential growth rate of the group with respect to the induced pseudo-metric is strictly greater than that of its quotients. A prototypical example is the action of a free group on its Cayley graph with respect to a free generating set. More generally, with \textit{G. Arzhantseva} et al. [Pac. J. Math. 278, No. 1, 1--49 (2015; Zbl 1382.20046)], we have shown that group actions with strongly contracting elements are growth tight. Examples of non-growth tight actions are product groups acting on the \(L^1\) products of Cayley graphs of the factors. In this paper we consider actions of product groups on product spaces, where each factor group acts with a strongly contracting element on its respective factor space. We show that this action is growth tight with respect to the \(L^p\) metric on the product space, for all \(1 < p \leq \infty\). In particular, the \(L^\infty\) metric on a product of Cayley graphs corresponds to a word metric on the product group. This gives the rst examples of groups that are growth tight with respect to an action on one of their Cayley graphs and non-growth tight with respect to an action on another, answering a question of \textit{R. Grigorchuk} and \textit{P. de la Harpe} [J. Dyn. Control Syst. 3, No. 1, 51--89 (1997; Zbl 0949.20033)].