Liftable self-similar groups and scale groups

Abstract

We canonically identify the groups of isometries and dilations of local fields and their rings of integers with subgroups of the automorphism group of the $(d+1)$-regular tree $\widetilde T_{d+1}$, where $d$ is the residual degree. Then we introduce the class of liftable self-similar groups acting on a $d$-regular rooted tree whose ascending HNN extensions act faithfully and vertex transitively on $\widetilde T_{d+1}$ fixing one of the ends. The closures of these extensions in $\mathrm{Aut}(\widetilde T_{d+1})$ are totally disconnected locally compact group that belong to the class of scale groups. We give numerous examples of liftable groups coming from self-similar groups acting essentially freely or groups admitting finite $L$-presentations. In particular, we show that the finitely presented group constructed by the first author and the finitely presented HNN extension of the Basilica group embed into the group $\mathcal D(\mathbb Q_2)$ of dilations of the field $\mathbb Q_2$ of $2$-adic numbers. These actions, translated to $\widetilde T_3$, are 2-transitive on the punctured boundary of $\widetilde T_3$. Also we explore scale-invariant groups with the purpose of getting new examples of scale groups.