Finitely generated residually torsion-free nilpotent groups. I

Abstract

AbstractThe object of this paper is to study the sequence of torsion-free ranks of the quotients by the terms of the lower central series of a finitely generated group. This gives rise to the introduction into the study of finitely generated, residually torison-free nilpotent groups of notions relating to the Gelfand-Kirillov dimension. These notions are explored here. The main result concerning the sequences alluded to is the proof that there are continuously many such sequences.