Garside groups are strongly translation discrete

Abstract

In this paper we show that all Garside groups are strongly translation discrete, that is, the translation numbers of non-torsion elements are strictly positive and for any real number r there are only finitely many conjugacy classes of elements whose translation numbers are less than or equal to r. It is a consequence of the inequality “ inf s ( g ) ⩽ inf s ( g n ) n < inf s ( g ) + 1 ” for a positive integer n and an element g of a Garside group G, where inf s denotes the maximal infimum for the conjugacy class. We prove the inequality by studying the semidirect product G ( n ) = Z ⋉ G n of the infinite cyclic group Z and the cartesian product G n of a Garside group G, which turns out to be a Garside group. We also show that the root problem in a Garside group G can be reduced to a conjugacy problem in G ( n ) , hence the root problem is solvable for Garside groups.