Amenability of bounded automata groups on infinite alphabets (Q6570072)

The Banach-Tarski paradox is closely related to the nonamenability of \(F_{2}\), the free group with two generators. For some groups, amenability is easy to decide, while for others this is a difficult issue. The Grigorchuk group [\textit{R. I. Grigorchuk}, Sov. Math., Dokl. 28, 23--26 (1983; Zbl 0547.20025)] was the first example of a group of intermediate growth, groups of intermediate growth are always amenable, but not elementary amenable (see [\textit{C. Chou}, Ill. J. Math. 24, 396--407 (1980; Zbl 0439.20017)]).\N\NIn the paper under review, the author studies the action of groups generated by bounded activity automata with infinite alphabets on their orbital Schreier graphs. He introduces an amenability criterion for such groups based on the recurrence of the first level action. Its motivation comes from the investigation of iterated monodromy groups of entire transcendental functions in holomorphic dynamics. One of the main results is Theorem 1: Let \(f\) be a postsingularly finite entire transcendental function. Then, the iterated monodromy group of \(f\) is amenable if and only if the monodromy group of \(f\) is amenable.\N\NOn the other hand, there are entire transcendental functions with monodromy group given by the free product \(C_{2} \ast C_{2} \ast C_{2}\) and thus with non-amenable iterated monodromy groups.