Liftable self-similar groups and scale groups (Q6884476)

The authors study groups acting vertex-transitively on regular trees while fixing an end, with particular emphasis on scale groups. A central notion introduced in the paper is that of a liftable self-similar group acting on a rooted regular tree, defined via an injective endomorphism taking values in a vertex stabilizer.\N\NThe main result shows that for any such group \(G\), the associated ascending HNN extension embeds faithfully into the automorphism group of a \((d+1)\)-regular tree fixing an end and that the closure of the image is a scale group whenever \(G\) acts transitively on the first level. This provides a general mechanism for constructing new examples of scale groups.\N\NFurther results identify groups of isometries and dilations of non-Archimedean local fields with automorphism groups of regular trees and yield embeddings of several classical self-similar groups, including the Grigorchuk and Basilica groups, into dilation groups of \(\mathbb{Q}_2\). Applications include new examples of scale groups arising from both amenable and non-amenable discrete groups.