English

The Congruence Subgroup Problem for the Free Metabelian group on $n\geq4$ generators

Group Theory 2019-02-05 v5

Abstract

The congruence subgroup problem for a finitely generated group Γ\Gamma asks whether the map Aut(Γ)^Aut(Γ^)\hat{Aut\left(\Gamma\right)}\to Aut(\hat{\Gamma}) is injective, or more generally, what is its kernel C(Γ)C\left(\Gamma\right)? Here X^\hat{X} denotes the profinite completion of XX. It is well known that for finitely generated free abelian groups C(Zn)={1}C\left(\mathbb{Z}^{n}\right)=\left\{ 1\right\} for every n3n\geq3, but C(Z2)=F^ωC\left(\mathbb{Z}^{2}\right)=\hat{F}_{\omega}, where F^ω\hat{F}_{\omega} is the free profinite group on countably many generators. Considering Φn\Phi_{n}, the free metabelian group on nn generators, it was also proven that C(Φ2)=F^ωC\left(\Phi_{2}\right)=\hat{F}_{\omega} and C(Φ3)F^ωC\left(\Phi_{3}\right)\supseteq\hat{F}_{\omega}. In this paper we prove that C(Φn)C\left(\Phi_{n}\right) for n4n\geq4 is abelian. So, while the dichotomy in the abelian case is between n=2n=2 and n3n\geq3, in the metabelian case it is between n=2,3n=2,3 and n4n\geq4.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1701.02459,
  title  = {The Congruence Subgroup Problem for the Free Metabelian group on $n\geq4$ generators},
  author = {David El-Chai Ben-Ezra},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.02459},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

30 pages