Generalized residual finiteness of groups (Q6555313)

A group \(G\) is called residually finite if for every element \(g \not =1\) of \(G\), there is \(N \trianglelefteq G\) such that \(g \not \in N\) and \(|G:N| < \infty\). In the paper under review, the authors propose the notion of \(\alpha\)-residual finiteness for arbitrary ordinal \(\alpha\) (see Definition 3.4).\N\NThe main result is a construction of the following examples (Theorem 1.1): for every \(n \in \mathbb{N}\), where \(n \geq 1\), there exists a finitely generated group \(G_{n}\) which is \(\omega \cdot n\)-residually finite, but not \(\omega \cdot (n-1)\)-residually finite. This construction is quite elementary and makes use of wreath products. Let \(A \wr B\) denote the (regular) wreath product of two group \(A\) and \(B\). It is well known that \(\mathbb{Z}\) and \(\mathbb{Z} \wr \mathbb{Z}\) are residually finite but \((\mathbb{Z} \wr \mathbb{Z}) \wr \mathbb{Z}\) is not. Applying the definition it is not difficult to show that \((\mathbb{Z} \wr \mathbb{Z}) \wr \mathbb{Z}\) is \(\omega \cdot 2\)-residually finite.\N\NAnother interesting result is Theorem 1.2: A group \(G\) is \(\alpha\)-residually finite if and only if \(G\) admits a simple action on a rooted \(\alpha\)-tree.