A finitely-presented solvable group with a small quasi-isometry group.

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Publication:2460982



Abstract: We exhibit a family of infinite, finitely-presented, nilpotent-by-abelian groups. Each member of this family is a solvable S-arithmetic group that is related to Baumslag-Solitar groups, and everyone of these groups has a quasi-isometry group that is virtually a product of a solvable real Lie group and a solvable p-adic Lie group. In addition, we propose a candidate for a polycyclic group whose quasi-isometry group is a solvable real Lie group, and we introduce a candidate for a quasi-isometrically rigid solvable group that is not finitely presented. We also record some conjectures on the large-scale geometry of lamplighter groups.


Let \(n\geq 2\) and \(p\) be a prime number. Denote by \(\Gamma=\mathbf B_n(\mathbb{Z}[1/p])\) the upper triangular subgroup of \(\mathbf{SL}_n(\mathbb{Z}[1/p])\). Clearly, \(\Gamma\) is a finitely presented soluble group. So it can be considered its group of `quasi-isometries' \(\text{QI}(\Gamma)\), which is the group of all quasi-isometries of \(\Gamma\) modulo those that have finite distance in the sup-norm to the identity. It is well known that when \(n\geq 3\) the group \(\Gamma\) is soluble and is a finite extension of a product of finite-dimensional Lie groups (real or \(p\)-adic). In the article under review the author proves the following result (here \(\mathbf{Ad(B}_n)\) denotes the image of \(\mathbf B_n\) under the map \(\mathbf{Ad}\colon\mathbf{SL}_n\to\mathbf{PGL}_n\)). Theorem 1. Let \(n\geq 3\). Then \(\text{QI}(\Gamma)\) is a split extension of the direct product \((\mathbf{Ad(B}_n))(\mathbb{R})\times(\mathbf{Ad(B}_n))(\mathbb{Q}_p)\) by an automorphism of order 2.











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