Isoperimetric inequalities in finitely generated groups

Abstract To each finitely generated group G , we associate a quasi-isometric invariant called the Dehn spectrum of G . If G is finitely presented, our invariant is closely related to the Dehn function of G , yet provides more information by encoding the isoperimetric behaviour of G at various scales. The main goal of this paper is to initiate the study of the Dehn spectrum of finitely generated (but not necessarily finitely presented) groups. In particular, we compute the Dehn spectrum of small cancellation groups, certain wreath products, and free Burnside groups of sufficiently large odd exponent. We also address some natural questions on the structure of the poset of Dehn spectra. As an application, we show that there exist $$2^{\aleph _0}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>ℵ</mml:mi> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:msup> </mml:math> pairwise non-quasi-isometric finitely generated groups of finite exponent.