Divergence of finitely presented groups

Abstract: We construct families of finitely presented groups exhibiting new divergence behavior; we obtain divergence functions of the form $r^\alpha$ for a dense set of exponents $\alpha \in [2,\infty)$ and $r^n\log(r)$ for integers $n \geq 2$. The same construction also yields examples of finitely presented groups which contain Morse elements that are not contracting.