Two periodicity conditions for spinal groups

Abstract

A constant spinal group is a subgroup of the automorphism group of a regular rooted tree, generated by a group of rooted automorphisms $A$ and a group of directed automorphisms $B$ whose action on a subtree is equal to the global action. We provide two conditions in terms of certain dynamical systems determined by $A$ and $B$ for constant spinal groups to be periodic, generalising previous results on Grigorchuk--Gupta--Sidki groups and other related constructions. This allows us to provide various new examples of finitely generated infinite periodic groups.