The rate of escape of random walks on polycyclic and metabelian groups

Abstract: We use subgroup distortion to determine the rate of escape of a simple random walk on a class of polycyclic groups, and we show that the rate of escape is invariant under changes of generating set for these groups. For metabelian groups, we define a stronger form of subgroup distortion, which applies to non-finitely generated subgroups. Under this hypothesis, we compute the rate of escape for certain random walks on metabelian groups via a comparison to the toppling of a dissipative abelian sandpile.