{"@context":["https://w3id.org/fdo/context/v1",{"schema":"https://schema.org/","prov":"http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#","fdo":"https://w3id.org/fdo/vocabulary/"}],"@id":"https://fdo.portal.mardi4nfdi.de/fdo/Q2803889","@type":"DigitalObject","kernel":{"@id":"https://fdo.portal.mardi4nfdi.de/fdo/Q2803889","digitalObjectType":"https://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle","primaryIdentifier":"mardi:Q2803889","kernelVersion":"v1","immutable":true,"modified":"2026-04-03T11:54:34Z"},"profile":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ScholarlyArticle","@id":"https://portal.mardi4nfdi.de/entity/Q2803889","name":"What is a horocyclic product, and how is it related to lamplighters?","headline":"What is a horocyclic product, and how is it related to lamplighters?","description":"scientific article; zbMATH DE number 6576479","url":"https://portal.mardi4nfdi.de/entity/Q2803889","datePublished":"2016-05-03","author":[{"@id":"https://portal.mardi4nfdi.de/entity/Q213060"}],"publisher":[{"@id":"https://portal.mardi4nfdi.de/entity/Q6587757"}],"comment":"This is a survey of some work by the author and others on various structures associated with a question posed by the author in the 1980s about vertex-transitive graphs that do not look like Cayley graphs. It begins with some background on this question, and an answer provided by the `Diestel-Leader graphs' \\(\\mathrm{DL}(p,q)\\), constructed by \\textit{R. Diestel} and \\textit{I. Leader} [J. Algebr. Comb. 14, No. 1, 17--25 (2001; Zbl 0985.05020)] and proved to be not quasi-isometric with any Cayley graph when \\(p \\neq q\\), by \\textit{A. Eskin} et al. [Ann. Math. (2) 176, No. 1, 221--260 (2012; Zbl 1264.22005)]. It then proceeds to describe the more general notions of Busemann functions and horocyclic products, and the special cases of `treebolic spaces' and Sol-groups and -manifolds, which share some geometric features with each other and with the Diestel-Leader graphs. Then it returns to the case \\(p = q\\) for the Diestel-Leader graphs, reporting on the fact (discovered by R.\\ Möller and P.\\ Neumann) that the graph \\(\\mathrm{DL}(p,p)\\) is a Cayley graph, for a group that turned out to be the `lamplighter' group \\(\\mathbb{Z}_p \\wr \\mathbb{Z}\\). The paper concludes with a review of some other developments."},"provenance":{"prov:generatedAtTime":"2026-04-03T11:54:34Z","prov:wasAttributedTo":"MaRDI Knowledge Graph"}}