Conjugacy classes of polyspinal groups

Abstract

Spinal groups and multi-GGS groups are both generalisations of the well-known Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki (GGS-)groups. Here we give a necessary condition for spinal groups to be conjugate, and we establish a necessary and sufficient condition for multi-GGS groups to be conjugate. We also introduce a natural common generalisation of both classes, which we call polyspinal groups. Our results enable us to give a negative answer to a question of Bartholdi, Grigorchuk and Sunik, on whether every finitely generated branch group is isomorphic to a weakly branch spinal group.

12 pages; replaces previous version called "Conjugacy classes of multi-spinal groups"