Free products of cyclic groups in groups of infinite unitriangular matrices

Abstract

Groups of infinite unitriangular matrices over associative unitary rings are considered. These groups naturally act on infinite dimensional free modules over underlying rings. They are profinite in case underlying rings are finite. Inspired by their connection with groups defined by finite automata the problem to construct faithful representations of free products of groups by banded infinite unitriangular matrices is considered.For arbitrary prime p a sufficient conditions on a finite set of banded infinite unitriangular matrices over unitary associative rings of characteristic p under which they generate the free product of cyclic p-groups is given. The conditions are based on certain properties of the actions on finite dimensional free modules over underlying rings.It is shown that these conditions are satisfied. For arbitrary free product of finite number of cyclic p-groups constructive examples of the sets of infinite unitriangular matrices over unitar associative rings of characteristic p that generate given free product are presented. These infinite matrices are constructed from finite dimensional ones that are nilpotent Jordan blocks.A few open questions concerning properties of presented examples and other types of faithful representations are formulated.