Controlled coarse homology and isoperimetric inequalities

Abstract

We study a coarse homology theory with prescribed growth conditions. For a finitely generated group G with the word length metric this homology theory turns out to be related to amenability of G. We characterize vanishing of a certain fundamental class in our homology in terms of an isoperimetric inequality on G and show that on any group at most linear control is needed for this class to vanish. The latter is a homological version of the classical Burnside problem for infinite groups, with a positive solution. As applications we characterize existence of primitives of the volume form with prescribed growth and show that coarse homology classes obstruct weighted Poincare inequalities.