English

Computably totally disconnected locally compact groups

Logic 2024-09-02 v5

Abstract

We study totally disconnected, locally compact (t.d.l.c.) groups from an algorithmic perspective. We give various approaches to defining computable presentations of t.d.l.c.\ groups, and show their equivalence. In the process, we obtain an algorithmic Stone-type duality between t.d.l.c.~groups and certain countable ordered groupoids given by the compact open cosets. We exploit the flexibility given by these different approaches to show that several natural groups, such as \Aut(Td)\Aut(T_d) and \SLn(\QQp)\SL_n(\QQ_p), have computable presentations. We show that many construction leading from t.d.l.c.\ groups to new t.d.l.c.\ groups have algorithmic versions that stay within the class of computably presented t.d.l.c.\ groups. This leads to further examples, such as \PGLn(\QQp)\PGL_n(\QQ_p). We study whether objects associated with computably t.d.l.c.\ groups are computable: the modular function, the scale function, and Cayley-Abels graphs in the compactly generated case. We give a criterion when computable presentations of t.d.l.c.~groups are unique up to computable isomorphism, and apply it to \QQp\QQ_p as an additive group, and the semidirect product \ZZ\QQp\ZZ\ltimes \QQ_p. We give (joint with Willis) an example of a computably t.d.l.c. group with noncomputable scale function.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.09878,
  title  = {Computably totally disconnected locally compact groups},
  author = {Alexander Melnikov and Andre Nies},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.09878},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Definition 2.4 of c.l.c. trees is changed in this version 3 to take care of uniformity issues in the equivalence theorems. The presentation no longer comes with the information whether the group is compact

R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:54:12.837Z