Almost-automorphisms of trees, cloning systems and finiteness properties

We prove that the group of almost-automorphisms of the infinite rooted regular [Formula: see text]-ary tree [Formula: see text] arises naturally as the Thompson-like group of a so-called [Formula: see text]-ary cloning system. A similar phenomenon occurs for any Röver–Nekrashevych group [Formula: see text], for [Formula: see text] a self-similar group. We use this framework to expand on work of Belk and Matucci, who proved that the Röver group, using the Grigorchuk group for [Formula: see text], is of type [Formula: see text]. Namely, we find some natural conditions on subgroups of [Formula: see text] to ensure that [Formula: see text] is of type [Formula: see text] and, in particular, we prove this for all [Formula: see text] in the infinite family of Šunić groups. We also prove that if [Formula: see text] is itself of type [Formula: see text], then so is [Formula: see text], and that every finitely generated virtually free group is self-similar, so in particular every finitely generated virtually free group [Formula: see text] yields a type [Formula: see text] Röver–Nekrashevych group [Formula: see text].

Simple groups of automorphisms of trees determined by their actions on finite subtrees

We introduce the notion of the

Groups of automorphisms of trees and their limit sets

Let $T$ be a locally finite simplicial tree and let $\Gamma\subset{\rm Aut}(T)$ be a finitely generated discrete subgroup. We obtain an explicit formula for the critical exponent of the Poincaré series associated with $\Gamma$, which is also the Hausdorff dimension of the limit set of $\Gamma$; this uses a description due to Lubotzky of an appropriate fundamental domain for finite index torsion-free subgroups of $\Gamma$. Coornaert, generalizing work of Sullivan, showed that the limit set is of finite positive measure in its dimension; we give a new proof of this result. Finally, we show that the critical exponent is locally constant on the space of deformations of $\Gamma$.