Nilpotent Cantor actions

A nilpotent Cantor action is a minimal equicontinuous action $Phi colon Gamma times frak{X} to frak{X}$ on a Cantor set $frak{X}$, where $Gamma$ contains a finitely-generated nilpotent subgroup $Gamma_0 subset Gamma$ of finite index. In this note, we show that these actions are distinguished among general Cantor actions: any effective action of a finitely generated group on a Cantor space, which is continuously orbit equivalent to a nilpotent Cantor action, must itself be a nilpotent Cantor action. As an application of this result, we obtain new invariants of nilpotent Cantor actions under continuous orbit equivalence.