A finitely generated branch group of exponential growth without free subgroups

We will give an example of a branch group $G$ that has exponential growth but does not contain any non-abelian free subgroups. This answers question 16 from \cite{Bartholdi} positively. The proof demonstrates how to construct a non-trivial word $w_{a,b}(x,y)$ for any $a,b \in G$ such that $w_{a,b}(a,b) = 1$. The group $G$ is not just-infinite. We prove that every normal subgroup of $G$ is finitely generated as an abstract group and every proper quotient soluble. Further, $G$ has infinite virtual first Betti number but is not large.

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