Effective Separability of Finitely Generated Nilpotent Groups

Abstract

We give effective proofs of residual finiteness and conjugacy separability for finitely generated nilpotent groups. In particular, we give precise asymptotic bounds for a function introduced by Bou-Rabee that measures how large the quotients that are need to separate non-identity elements of bounded length from the identity which improves the work of Bou-Rabee. Similarly, we give polynomial upper and lower bounds for an analogous function introduced by Lawton, Louder, and McReynolds that measures how large the quotients that are need to separate pairs of distinct conjugacy classes of bounded work length using work Blackburn and Mal'tsev.