Structure of normally and finitely non-co-Hopfian groups

A group G is (finitely) co-Hopfian if it does not contain any proper (finite-index) subgroups isomorphic to itself. We study finitely generated groups G that admit a descending chain of proper normal finite-index subgroups, each of which is isomorphic to G. We prove that up to finite index, these are always obtained by pulling back a chain of subgroups from a free abelian quotient. We give two applications: First, we show any characteristic proper finite-index subgroup isomorphic to G arises by pulling back a finite-index subgroup of the abelianization, and secondly, we prove special cases (for normal subgroups) of conjectures of Benjamini and Nekrashevych–Pete regarding the classification of scale-invariant groups.