A Conjecture of Bachmuth and Mochizuki on Automorphisms of Soluble Groups

Abstract

In [1], Bachmuth and Mochizuki conjecture, by analogy with a celebrated result of Tits on linear groups [8], that a finitely generated group of automorphisms of a finitely generated soluble group either contains a soluble subgroup of finite index (which may of course be taken to be normal) or contains a non-abelian free subgroup. They point out that their conjecture holds for nilpotent-by-abelian groups and in some other cases.