We discuss Bass's conjecture on the vanishing of the Hattori-Stallings rank from the viewpoint of geometric group theory. It is noted that groups without u-elements satisfy this conjecture. This leads in particular to a simple proof of the conjecture in the case of groups of subexponential growth.
We give a construction of homomorphisms from a group into the reals using random walks on the group. The construction is an alternative to an earlier construction that works in more general situations. Applications include an estimate on the drift of random walks on groups of subexponential growth admitting no nontrivial homomorphism to the integers and inequalities between the asymptotic drift and the asymptotic entropy. Some of the entropy estimates obtained have applications independent of the...
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