Volume gradients and homology in towers of residually-free groups (Q522618)

In this well-written and fairly comprehensive paper, the authors study the growth of homology groups and the cellular volume of classifying spaces as one passes to subgroups \(G_n\) of increasing finite index in a fixed finitely generated group \(G\). It is assumed that the finite index subgroups \(G_n\) are normal in \(G\), are nested \(G_{n+1} \subset G_n\), and that \(\bigcap_{n \geq 0} G_n = 1\). If the group \(G\) is of type \(FP_m\) over a field \(k\), then \(\dim H_j(G_n,k)/[G : G_n]\) is bounded by a constant. Determining whether this ratio always tend to a limit as \([G : G_n] \to \infty\), and if so, whether the limit is an invariant of \(G\), is of immense interest. The main focus of the paper is the calculation of \(\ell_2\) Betti numbers, the rank gradient and the asymptotic deficiency of finitely presented residually free groups. Recall that a group is called a limit group if for every finite subset \(S\) of \(G\) there is a homomorphism from \(G\) to the free group \(F_2\) on two generators that is injective on \(S\). It is known that if \(G\) is a limit group, then for all \(j \geq 1\), the limit of \(\dim H_j(G_n, k)/[G, G_n]\) as \(n \to\infty\) exists and is zero except for \(j = 1\), where it equals \(-\chi(G)\). The authors prove a homotopical version of this result, in which, \(\dim H_j(G_n, k)\) is replaced by the minimal number of \(j\)-cells in \(K(G_n, 1)\). Both the homological and homotopical versions are special cases of general results about the fundamental groups of graphs of \textit{slow} groups. The idea is to relate the growth of the cellular volume in classifying spaces for fundamental groups of graphs of groups to the growth in the vertex and edge groups of the decomposition. Further, for a residually free group \(G\) that is of type \(FP_m\) but not of type \(FP_\infty\), it is proved that there exists an exhausting filtration by normal subgroups of finite index \(G_n\) so that \(\lim_n \dim H_j(G_n, k)/[G:G_n] = 0\) for \(j \leq m\). If \(G\) is of type \(FP_\infty\), then the limit, which exists in all dimensions, is also calculated in the paper.