English

Commutator width in the first Grigorchuk group

Group Theory 2020-06-11 v3 Logic in Computer Science

Abstract

Let GG be the first Grigorchuk group. We show that the commutator width of GG is 22: every element g[G,G]g\in [G,G] is a product of two commutators, and also of six conjugates of aa. Furthermore, we show that every finitely generated subgroup HGH\leq G has finite commutator width, which however can be arbitrarily large, and that GG contains a subgroup of infinite commutator width. The proofs were assisted by the computer algebra system GAP.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.05706,
  title  = {Commutator width in the first Grigorchuk group},
  author = {Laurent Bartholdi and Thorsten Groth and Igor Lysenok},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.05706},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Wrt v1: improved presentation

R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:15:03.827Z