Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Let p be a prime number, and let F be a free pro-p group of rank two. Consider an automorphism α of F of finite order m, and let FixF(α) = {x ∈ F | α(x) = x} be the subgroup of F consisting of the elements fixed by α. It is known that if m is prime to p and α = idF, then the rank of FixF(α) is infinite. In this paper we show that if m is a finite power pr of p, the rank of FixF(α) is at most 2. We conjecture that if the rank of F is n and the order of a is a power of α, then rank (FixF(α)) ≤ n.