The mean Dehn function of abelian groups

Abstract

While Dehn functions, D(n), of finitely presented groups are very well studied in the literature, mean Dehn functions are much less considered. M. Gromov introduced the notion of mean Dehn function of a group, $D_{mean}(n)$, suggesting that in many cases it should grow much more slowly than the Dehn function itself. Using only elementary counting methods, this paper presents some computations pointing into this direction. Particularizing them to the case of any finite presentation of a finitely generated abelian group (for which it is well known that $D(n)\sim n^2$ except in the 1-dimensional case), we show that the three variations $D_{osmean}(n)$, $D_{smean}(n)$ and $D_{mean}(n)$ all are bounded above by $Kn(\ln n)^2$, where the constant $K$ depends only on the presentation (and the geodesic combing) chosen. This improves an earlier bound given by Kukina and Roman'kov.