Conjugacy Separability and Free Products of Groups with Cyclic Amalgamation

Abstract

A group G is conjugacy separable if whenever x and y are non-conjugate elements of G, there exists some finite quotient of G in which the images of x and y are non- conjugate. It is known that free products of conjugacy separable groups are again conjugacy separable [19, 12]. The property is not preserved in general by the formation of free products with amalgamation; but in [15] a method was introduced for showing that under certain circumstances, the free product of two conjugacy separable groups G1 and G2 amalgamating a cyclic subgroup is again conjugacy separable. The main result of [15] states that this is the case if G1 and G2 are free-by-finite or finitely generated and nilpotent-by-finite. We show here that the same conclusion holds for groups G1 and G2 in a considerably wider class, including, in particular, all polycyclic-by-finite groups. (This answers a question posed by C. Y. Tang, Problem 8.70 of the Kourovka Notebook [7], as well as two questions recently asked by Kim, MacCarron and Tang in G. Kim, J. MacCarron and C. Y. Tang, ‘On generalised free products of conjugacy separable groups’, J. Algebra 180 (1996) 121–135.)