Wreath operations in the group of automorphisms of the binary tree

A new operation called tree-wreathing is defined on groups of automorphisms of the binary tree. Given a countable residually finite 2-group H and a free abelian group K of finite rank r this operation produces uniformly copies of these as automorphism groups of the binary tree such that the group generated by them is an over-group of the restricted wreath product H K. Indeed, G contains a normal subgroup N which is an infinite direct sum of copies of the derived group H′ and the quotient group G/N is isomorphic to H K. The tree-wreathing construction preserves the properties of solvability, torsion-freeness and of having finite state (i.e., generated by finite automata). A faithful representation of any free metabelian group of finite rank is obtained as a finite-state group of automorphisms of the binary tree.