Characters of diagonal products and Hilbert-Schmidt stability

Abstract: We study the character theory of diagonal products as well as alternating and elementary enrichments of groups. Our motivation is to show Hilbert-Schmidt stability for various diagonal products, including the classical family of B. H. Neumann groups. Additionally, we initiate a quantitative study of Hilbert-Schmidt stability for infinitely presented groups, through the notion of stability radius growth, and exhibit an uncountable family of Hilbert-Schmidt stable amenable groups with arbitrarily large such growth. Some applications to local Hilbert-Schmidt stability are also provided.