Virtual retracts in groups acting on rooted trees

Abstract

We study virtual retracts in groups acting on rooted trees. We show that finitely generated branch groups do not have the local retraction (LR) property. Furthermore, we specialize to iterated monodromy groups of post-critically finite quadratic complex polynomials and show that the (LR) property characterizes, among post-critically finite quadratic complex polynomials, those with a euclidean orbifold, i.e. the powering map and the Chebyshev polynomial. Lastly, we show that periodic quadratic complex polynomials provide new examples of pro-$2$ groups with complete finitely generated Hausdorff spectrum.