Distortion element in the automorphism group of a full shift

Abstract We show that there is a distortion element in a finitely generated subgroup G of the automorphism group of the full shift, namely an element of infinite order whose word norm grows polylogarithmically. As a corollary, we obtain a lower bound on the entropy dimension of any subshift containing a copy of G , and that a sofic shift’s automorphism group contains a distortion element if and only if the sofic shift is uncountable. We obtain also that groups of Turing machines and the higher-dimensional Brin–Thompson groups $mV$ admit distortion elements; in particular, $2V$ (unlike V ) does not admit a proper action on a CAT $(0)$ cube complex. In each case, the distortion element roughly corresponds to the SMART machine of Cassaigne, Ollinger, and Torres-Avilés [A small minimal aperiodic reversible Turing machine. J. Comput. System Sci. 84 (2017), 288–301].