{"title":"On the complexity of the cogrowth sequence","authors":"J. Bell, M. Mishna","doi":"10.4171/jca/39","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Given a finitely generated group with generating set $S$, we study the cogrowth sequence, which is the number of words of length $n$ over the alphabet $S$ that are equal to one. This is related to the probability of return for walks in a Cayley graph with steps from $S$. We prove that the cogrowth sequence is not P-recursive when $G$ is an amenable group of superpolynomial growth, answering a question of Garrabant and Pak. In addition, we compute the cogrowth for certain infinite families of free products of finite groups and free groups, and prove that a gap theorem holds: if $S$ is a finite symmetric generating set for a group $G$ and if $a_n$ denotes the number of words of length $n$ over the alphabet $S$ that are equal to $1$ then either $\\limsup_n a_n^{1/n} \\le 2$ or $\\limsup_n a_n^{1/n} \\ge 2\\sqrt{2}$.","PeriodicalId":0,"journal":{"name":"","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4171/jca/39","citationCount":"5","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"","FirstCategoryId":"100","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.4171/jca/39","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 5
Abstract
Given a finitely generated group with generating set $S$, we study the cogrowth sequence, which is the number of words of length $n$ over the alphabet $S$ that are equal to one. This is related to the probability of return for walks in a Cayley graph with steps from $S$. We prove that the cogrowth sequence is not P-recursive when $G$ is an amenable group of superpolynomial growth, answering a question of Garrabant and Pak. In addition, we compute the cogrowth for certain infinite families of free products of finite groups and free groups, and prove that a gap theorem holds: if $S$ is a finite symmetric generating set for a group $G$ and if $a_n$ denotes the number of words of length $n$ over the alphabet $S$ that are equal to $1$ then either $\limsup_n a_n^{1/n} \le 2$ or $\limsup_n a_n^{1/n} \ge 2\sqrt{2}$.