The pure cactus group is residually nilpotent

Abstract

We show that the pure cactus group $\Gamma_{n+1}$ is residually nilpotent and exhibit a surjective homomorphism $\Gamma_{n+1} \to (\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^{2^n-n(n+1)/2-1}$ whose kernel is residually torsion-free nilpotent.