Cayley-tree pseudo-orbit tracing: period subgroups and relative geometry

We introduce Cayley-tree POTP, obtained by imposing the pseudo-orbit equations of a finitely generated group action only along a spanning tree of a Cayley graph. For zero-dimensional actions, we characterize this property by equicontinuity along normalized replacement paths; for subshifts, the criterion is expressed in the right-coset space of the common left-period subgroup. These criteria characterize virtual freeness and, for commensurated subgroup pairs, identifies Cayley-tree POTP of the coset full shift with relative quasi-tree geometry and a finite Bass–Serre decomposition. For infinite-index VFP pairs, Cayley-tree POTP of the coset full shift is equivalent to virtual cohomological codimension one, although ordinary POTP holds for every such shift. Finally, we prove that the strong topological Rokhlin property passes to finite-index overgroups. Consequently every finitely generated virtually free group has this property, answering the virtually cyclic case posed by Doucha, and Cayley-tree POTP is generic for its Cantor actions.