English

A dynamical definition of f.g. virtually free groups

Group Theory 2016-01-19 v2 Formal Languages and Automata Theory Dynamical Systems

Abstract

We show that the class of finitely generated virtually free groups is precisely the class of demonstrable subgroups for R. Thompson's group VV. The class of demonstrable groups for VV consists of all groups which can embed into VV with a natural dynamical behaviour in their induced actions on the Cantor space C2:={0,1}ω\mathfrak{C}_2 := \left\{0,1\right\}^\omega. There are also connections with formal language theory, as the class of groups with context-free word problem is also the class of finitely generated virtually free groups, while R. Thompson's group VV is a candidate as a universal coCFco\mathcal{CF} group by Lehnert's conjecture, corresponding to the class of groups with context free co-word problem (as introduced by Holt, Rees, R\"over, and Thomas). Our main reults answers a question of Berns-Zieze, Fry, Gillings, Hoganson, and Matthews, and separately of Bleak and Salazar-D\'iaz, and it fits into the larger exploration of the class of coCFco\mathcal{CF} groups as it shows that all four of the known closure properties of the class of coCFco\mathcal{CF} groups hold for the set of finitely generated subgroups of V.V.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1510.02638,
  title  = {A dynamical definition of f.g. virtually free groups},
  author = {Daniel Bennett and Collin Bleak},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.02638},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

13 pp, 6 figures