Residually finite amenable groups that are not Hilbert-Schmidt stable

Abstract: We construct the first examples of residually finite amenable groups that are not Hilbert-Schmidt (HS) stable. We construct finitely generated, class 3 nilpotent by cyclic examples and solvable linear finitely presented examples. This also provides the first examples of amenable groups that are very flexibly HS-stable but not flexibly HS-stable and the first examples of residually finite amenable groups that are not locally HS-stable. Along the way we exhibit (necessarily not-finitely-generated) class 2 nilpotent groups $G = A\rtimes \Z$ with $A$ abelian such that the periodic points of the dual action are dense but it does not admit dense periodic measures. Finally we use the Tikuisis-White-Winter theorem to show all of the examples are not even operator-HS-stable; they admit operator norm almost homomorphisms that can not be HS-perturbed to true homomorphisms.