Self-similar abelian groups and their centralizers (Q6039659)

The authors extend results on transitive self-similar abelian subgroups of the group of automorphisms \(\mathcal{A}_m\) of an \(m\)-ary tree \(\mathcal{T}_m\) by \textit{A. M. Brunner} and \textit{S. N. Sidki} [Groups Geom. Dyn. 4, No. 3, 455--472 (2010; Zbl 1221.20018)] to the general case where the permutation group induced on the first level of the tree, has \(s \geq 1\) orbits. If \(A\) is such a group, then the authors construct the self-similar abelian group \(A^{\ast}\) which contains \(A\) and the group \(A^{\ast}\) is also a maximal abelian subgroup of \(\mathcal{A}_m\). Various constructions of the group \(A^{\ast}\) are given. It is proved that if \(A\) is a torsion self-similar abelian group, then it is is necessarily of finite exponent. The authors introduce for \(m=ns\geq 2\), a generalized adding machine \(a\), an automorphism of \(\mathcal{T}_m\) and show that its centralizer in \(\mathcal{A}_m\) is a split extension of \(\langle a\rangle^{\ast}\) by \(\mathcal{A}_s\).