On hereditarily self-similar $p$-adic analytic pro-$p$ groups

Abstract

A non-trivial finitely generated pro-$p$ group $G$ is said to be strongly hereditarily self-similar of index $p$ if every non-trivial finitely generated closed subgroup of $G$ admits a faithful self-similar action on a $p$-ary tree. We classify the solvable torsion-free $p$-adic analytic pro-$p$ groups of dimension less than $p$ that are strongly hereditarily self-similar of index $p$. Moreover, we show that a solvable torsion-free $p$-adic analytic pro-$p$ group of dimension less than $p$ is strongly hereditarily self-similar of index $p$ if and only if it is isomorphic to the maximal pro-$p$ Galois group of some field that contains a primitive $p$-th root of unity. As a key step for the proof of the above results, we classify the 3-dimensional solvable torsion-free $p$-adic analytic pro-$p$ groups that admit a faithful self-similar action on a $p$-ary tree, completing the classification of the 3-dimensional torsion-free $p$-adic analytic pro-$p$ groups that admit such actions.