Related papers: Approximating a group by its solvable quotients

The normal Farb growth of a group quantifies how well-approximated the group is by its finite quotients. We show that any S-arithmetic subgroup of a higher rank Chevalley group G has normal Farb growth n^dim(G).

We show that a finitely generated soluble group is virtually nilpotent if and only if the diameter of its finite coset spaces admits a uniform polynomial lower bound in terms of their size. We obtain the same conclusion for certain finitely…

In this work we study the structure of finitely generated groups for which a space of harmonic functions with fixed polynomial growth is finite dimensional. It is conjectured that such groups must be virtually nilpotent (the converse…

This paper helps explain the prevalence of soluble groups among the automorphism groups of regular maps (at least for `small' genus), by showing that every non-perfect hyperbolic ordinary triangle group $\Delta^+(p,q,r) = \langle\, x,y \ |…

We prove the following version of Milnor's theorem on solvable groups of exponential growth: A finitely generated solvable group which is not polycyclic contains an ascending HNN extension. Consequently, a finitely generated solvable group…

We exhibit a family of infinite, finitely-presented, nilpotent-by-abelian groups. Each member of this family is a solvable S-arithmetic group that is related to Baumslag-Solitar groups, and everyone of these groups has a quasi-isometry…

We describe the structure of "K-approximate subgroups'' of solvable subgroups of GL_n(C), showing that they have a large nilpotent piece. By combining this with the main result of our recent paper on approximate subgroups of torsion-free…

In this paper, we consider the conjugacy growth function of a group, which counts the number of conjugacy classes which intersect a ball of radius $n$ centered at the identity. We prove that in the case of virtually polycyclic groups, this…

A combing is a set of normal forms for a finitely generated group. This article investigates the language-theoretic and geometric properties of combings for nilpotent and polycyclic groups. It is shown that a finitely generated class 2…

We show that if all the finite coset spaces of a polycyclic group have diameter bounded uniformly below by a polynomial in their size then the group is virtually nilpotent. We obtain the same conclusion for a finitely generated residually…

We provide polynomial lower bounds for residual finiteness of residually finite, finitely generated solvable groups that admit infinite order elements in the Fitting subgroup of strict distortion at least exponential. For this class of…

We show that for some absolute (explicit) constant $C$, the following holds for every finitely generated group $G$, and all $d >0$: If there is some $ R_0 > \exp(\exp(Cd^C))$ for which the number of elements in a ball of radius $R_0$ in a…

We study systematically groups whose marked finite quotients form a recursive set. We give several definitions, and prove basic properties of this class of groups, and in particular emphasize the link between the growth of the depth…

We prove a quantitative refinement of the statement that groups of polynomial growth are finitely presented. Let $G$ be a group with finite generating set $S$ and let $\operatorname{Gr}(r)$ be the volume of the ball of radius $r$ in the…

This is a long overdue write up of the following: If the fundamental group of a normal complex algebraic variety (respectively Zariski open subset of a compact K\"ahler manifold) is a solvable group of matrices over Q (respectively…

Groups that can be approximated by finite groups have been the center of much research. This has led to the investigations of the subgroups of metric ultraproducts of finite groups. This paper attempts to study the dual problem: what are…

We prove super-quadratic lower bounds for the growth of the filling area function of a certain class of Carnot groups. This class contains groups for which it is known that their Dehn function grows no faster than $n^2\log n$. We therefore…

In this paper we survey a new criteria for solvability of finite groups in terms of number of supersolvable (also known as polycyclic) and non-supersolvable subgroups. In particular, we present original examples of supersolvable groups such…

Let $m_n(G)$ denote the number of maximal subgroups of $G$ of index $n$. An upper bound is given for the degree of maximal subgroup growth of all polycyclic metabelian groups $G$ (i.e., for $\limsup \frac{\log m_n(G)}{\log n}$, the degree…

Let $K=Z/pZ$ and let $A$ be a subset of $\GL_r(K)$ such that $<A>$ is solvable. We reduce the study of the growth of $A$ under the group operation to the nilpotent setting. Specifically we prove that either $A$ grows rapidly (meaning…