The Rank of a Direct Power of a Small-Cancellation Group

We construct an example of a finitely generated group G such that rank((G )ⁿ)=2 for all n1. For each n, we construct a finitely presented group G _n such that rank((G _n )ⁿ)=2. We conjecture that if G is a word-hyperbolic group then rank(G ⁿ ) as $ n. For each m we give an example of a residually finite group K _m such that K _m has exactly two relators, but K _m has no proper subgroups of index $ m. We construct a finitely generated group D such that there is an epimorphism DD×D.