Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2003/iii/paper-5/2/ii/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 5 2 ii Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For a finite generating set , use the symmetric alphabet . The Cayley graph has a vertex for each and an oriented edge labelled from to . Give every edge length one. Its vertex word metric isTwo finitely presented groups are quasi-isometric when their Cayley graphs, with these path metrics, are quasi-isometric. The choice of finite generating set is immaterial, as the following proof shows; the relators identify vertices but do not otherwise enter the metric definition.
Given finite generating sets of the same group, put and . Replace each letter in a shortest -word by a fixed -word to obtain . Reversing the roles gives . Therefore the vertex identity map satisfiesIt is onto, and hence a quasi-isometry. Map each edge to the fixed word path for its label, or pass through the uniformly dense vertex sets, to obtain the corresponding graph quasi-isometry with a bounded additive error. This proves equivalence of finite word metrics and independence of the two finite group presentations.
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