Embedding free Burnside groups in finitely presented groups

Abstract

We construct an embedding of a free Burnside group $B(m,n)$ of odd $n>2^{48}$ and rank $m>1$ in a finitely presented group with some special properties. The main application of this embedding is an easy construction of finitely presented non-amenable groups without noncyclic free subgroups (which provides a finitely presented counterexample to the von Neumann problem on amenable groups). As another application, we construct weakly finitely presented groups of odd exponent $n\gg 1$ which are not locally finite.

15 pages