Amenable groups with very poor compression into Lebesgue spaces (Q638789)

The compression exponent \(\alpha^{*}_{\mathsf V}(\mathsf{X})\) of a metric space \(\mathsf{X}=(X,\rho)\) into a Banach space \(\mathsf{V}=(V,\|\cdot\|)\) is the supremum of exponents \(\alpha\geq0\) for which there is an injection \(f:X\hookrightarrow V\) with \[ \rho(x,y)^{\alpha}<_C\| f(x)-f(y)\|\leq\rho(x,y) \] for all \(x,y\in X\) (where \(<_C\) denotes an inequality up to a positive multiplicative constant independent of the variables). This measures how closely the metric space can be coarsely Lipschitz embedded into the Banach space \(\mathsf{V}\). \textit{E. Guentner} and \textit{J. Kaminker} [J. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 70, No. 3, 703--718 (2004; Zbl 1082.46049)] introduced this measure with \(\mathsf X\) a finitely-generated group with a left-invariant word metric given by a symmetric generating set, and \(\mathsf{V}\) is a Hilbert space, where the compression exponent is shown to be independent of the choice of generating set. For a group \(G\) the equivariant compression exponent \(\alpha^{\#}(G)\) is the supremum of those \(\alpha\geq0\) for which there is an equivariant injective map \(f:G\hookrightarrow V\) with the same inequality for all \(x,y\in G\). The case considered here has \(V=L^p\); in the case of \(G\) amenable [\textit{M. Gromov}, Geometric group theory. Vol. 2. London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series. 182. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1993; Zbl 0841.20039)] showed that \(\alpha_{L^2}^{\#}(G)=\alpha_{L^2}^{*}(G)\), and Guentner and Kaminker showed that if \(\alpha_{L^2}^{\#}(G)>\frac12\) then \(G\) is amenable. Several authors raised the question of whether amenable groups can have small compression exponent, specifically motivated by the realization that many of the available methods could not give examples with exponent below \(\frac12\). This question (and other, related questions) are answered in a strong way in this paper, where the main result shows that there is a finitely generated amenable group that does not admit an embedding into \(L^p\) with positive exponent for any \(p\in[0,\infty)\).