Profinite completions of some groups acting on trees. (Q875931)

The author studies the profinite completion of groups of Grigorchuk and Gupta-Sidki type, i.e., torsion branch groups. Such a group \(G\) acts faithfully on a regular rooted tree \(T\) of finite valency and this action determines a profinite topology on \(G\) whose basis consists of level stabilizers of \(T\) in \(G\). The level stabilizer is of finite index, so this profinite topology is in general weaker than the full profinite topology on \(G\). Thus a type of the congruence subgroup problem naturally arises: does the full profinite topology on \(G\) coincide with the `congruence' topology, i.e., the topology given by level stabilizers. The full profinite topology is stronger in general, so as in the classical congruence subgroup problem we have an epimorphism \(\widehat G\to\widetilde G\) from the profinite completion \(\widehat G\) to the congruence completion \(\widetilde G\) whose kernel will be called the congruence kernel. One can state the congruence problem then as follows: describe the congruence kernel. We observe that the automorphism group \(\Aut(T)\) is a profinite group and so \(\widetilde G\) coincides with the closure of \(G\) in \(\Aut(G)\), i.e., the congruence topology is the topology induced from \(\Aut(T)\). The objective of the paper is to solve the congruence problem for certain classes of groups acting on rooted trees. Let \(p\) be an odd prime, \(T_p\) a \(p\)-regular tree and \(a\) is an automorphism of order \(p\) that permutes cyclically \(p\) branches of \(T_p\) of the first level. Consider a non-symmetric vector \(\overline\alpha=(\alpha_1,\dots,\alpha_{p-1})\) of \(p-1\) non-negative integers less than \(p\), i.e., \(\alpha_i\neq\alpha_{p-1}\) for at least one \(i\leq p-1/2\). Define recursively the following automorphisms of \(T_p\): \(b=(a^{\alpha_1},\dots,a^{\alpha_{p-1}},b)\), \(c=(c,a^{\alpha_1},\dots,a^{\alpha_{p-1}})\), where the vector on the right denotes how the automorphism acts on a subtree growing from every corresponding vertex of the first level. The groups considered in the paper are \(G_{\overline\alpha}=\langle a,b\rangle\) and \(\Gamma_{\overline\alpha}=\langle a,b,c\rangle\). The author solves the congruence subgroup problem for both of these groups. Namely it is proved that 1) The congruence kernel of \(G_{\overline\alpha}\) is trivial. 2) The congruence kernel of \(\Gamma_{\overline\alpha}=\langle a,b,c\rangle\) is an elementary Abelian pro-\(p\) group of countable rank, i.e., a countable Cartesian product of copies of \(C_p\).