Large scale geometry of nilpotent-by-cyclic groups (Q719075)

\textit{B. Farb} and \textit{L. Mosher} [Invent. Math. 131, No. 2, 419--451 (1998; Zbl 0937.22003)] gave a complete quasi-isometric classification of all finitely presented non-polycyclic, abelian-by-cyclic groups and showed that the class of abelian-by-cyclic groups is quasi-isometrically rigid. A fundamental difference between the abelian and the nilpotent case is that unlike abelian groups two finitely generated torsion-free nilpotent groups of the same dimension do not have to be lattices in the same nilpotent group. In the present paper the author shows that a similar rigidity phenomenon as in the abelian case holds for the class of irreducible nilpotent-by-cyclic groups. Specifically, let \(\Gamma_1, \Gamma _2\) be ascending HNN extensions of finitely generated nilpotent groups such that \(\Gamma_1\) is irreducible (in the sense of the author). If \(\Gamma_1\) and \(\Gamma _2\) are quasi-isometric to each other, then \(N_1\) and \(N_2\) are virtual lattices in a common simply connected nilpotent Lie group. As a consequence the author shows that the class of irreducible ascending HNN extensions of finitely generated nilpotent groups is quasi-isometrically rigid. In the paper there is a lot of results but for their formulation the author needs involved definitions. Besides the definition of irreducibility the following plays an important role: Let \(G\) be a group and \(\{H_{i}\}\) be a collection of subgroups. The author says that the collection \(\{H_{i}\}\) is well separated if the intersection of all conjugates of all normalizers of \(H_i\) in \(G\) lies in the centre of \(G\). A group \(G\) with a well separated set \({\mathcal A} = \{H_{j}; j\in I\}\) is a surplus generating set for \(G\) if for every \(j\in J,\;{\mathcal A}\setminus \{H_j\}\) generates \(G\), any two different members of \(\mathcal A\) intersect each other trivially and the restriction of \(\pi: G\mapsto G/[G,G]\) to each \(H_j\) is injective. With this definition the author proves for instance the following: Let \(N, N'\) be simply connected nilpotent Lie groups. Let \(f:N\mapsto N'\) be an identity fixing quasi-isometry sending for some subgroups \(H< N, H'<N'\) left cosets of \(xHx^{-1}\) to bounded neighborhoods of left cosets \(f(x)H'f(x)^{-1}\), where \(x\) ranges over some set \( K\). Provided that \(\{xHx^{-1};\;x\in K\}\) forms a surplus generating set for \(N\), then \(f\) is bounded distance from an isomorphism between \(N\) and \(N'\). A result for understanding of which one needs no notion of the paper is the following: Let \(\Gamma\) be a finitely presented, irreducible nilpotent-by-cyclic group. If \(G\) is a finitely generated group quasi-isometric to \(\Gamma\), then there is a finite normal subgroup \(F\) of \(G\) such that \(G/F\) is abstractly commensurable to some finitely presented, irreducible nilpotent-by-cyclic group \(\Gamma'\).