We show that for a generic simple closed curve C in the asymptotic boundary of a Gromov hyperbolic 3-space with cocompact metric X, there exist a unique least area plane P in X with asymptotic boundary C. This result has interesting topological applications for constructions of canonical 2-dimensional objects in 3-manifolds.
We show that for any simple closed curve in the sphere at infinity of a Gromov hyperbolic 3-space with cocompact metric, there exist a properly embedded least area plane in the space spanning the given curve. This gives a positive answer to a conjecture of Gabai. Soma has already proven this conjecture earlier. Our technique here is simpler and more general, and it can be applied to many similar settings.
We introduce the concept of boundary rigidity for Gromov hyperbolic spaces. We show that a proper geodesic Gromov hyperbolic space with a pole is boundary rigid if and only if its Gromov boundary is uniformly perfect. As an application, we show that for a non-compact Gromov hyperbolic complete Riemannian manifold or a Gromov hyperbolic uniform graph, boundary rigidity is equivalent to having positive Cheeger isoperimetric constant and also to being nonamenable. Moreover, several hyperbolic fillings of compact metric spaces are proved to be boundary rigid if and only if the metric spaces are un…
We show that the Gromov boundary of the free product of two infinite hyperbolic groups is uniquely determined up to homeomorphism by the homeomorphism types of the boundaries of its factors. We generalize this result to graphs of hyperbolic groups over finite subgroups. Finally, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the Gromov boundaries of any two hyperbolic groups to be homeomorphic (in terms of the topology of the boundaries of factors in terminal splittings over finite subgroups).
A real valued function $φ$ of one variable is called a metric transform if for every metric space $(X,d)$ the composition $d_φ= φ\circ d$ is also a metric on $X$. We give a complete characterization of the class of approximately nondecreasing, unbounded metric transforms $φ$ such that the transformed Euclidean half line $([0,\infty),|\cdot|_φ)$ is Gromov hyperbolic. As a consequence, we obtain metric transform rigidity for roughly geodesic Gromov hyperbolic spaces, that is, if $(X,d)$ is any metric space containing a rough geodesic ray and $φ$ is an approximately nondecreasing, unbounded metri…
This paper shows that every Gromov hyperbolic group can be described by a finite subdivision rule acting on the 3-sphere. This gives a boundary-like sequence of increasingly refined finite cell complexes which carry all quasi-isometry information about the group. This extends a result from Cannon and Swenson in 1998 that hyperbolic groups can be described by a recursive sequence of overlapping coverings by possibly wild sets, and demonstrates the existence of non-cubulated groups that can be represented by subdivision rules.
Suppose G is a Gromov hyperbolic group, and the boundary at infinity of G is quasisymmetrically homeomorphic to an Ahlfors Q-regular metric 2-sphere Z with Ahlfors regular conformal dimension Q. Then G acts discretely, cocompactly, and isometrically on hyperbolic 3-space.
We prove that the embedding of the quaternionic hyperbolic disc $H^1_\mathbb{H}$ into quaternionic hyperbolic $n$-space $H^n_\mathbb{H}$ is tight and thereby obtain the value of the Gromov norm of the quaternionic Kähler class.
We give upper bounds, linear in rank, to the topological dimensions of the Gromov boundaries of the intersection graph, the free factor graph and the cyclic splitting graph of a finitely generated free group.
We study the variety of actions of a fixed (Chevalley) group on arbitrary geodesic, Gromov hyperbolic spaces. In high rank we obtain a complete classification. In rank one, we obtain some partial results and give a conjectural picture.
In this paper we study the global geometry of the Kobayashi metric on domains in complex Euclidean space. We are particularly interested in developing necessary and sufficient conditions for the Kobayashi metric to be Gromov hyperbolic. For general domains, it has been suggested that a non-trivial complex affine disk in the boundary is an obstruction to Gromov hyperbolicity. This is known to be the case when the set in question is convex. In this paper we first extend this result to $\mathbb{C}$-convex sets with $C^1$-smooth boundary. We will then show that some boundary regularity is necessar…
Let S be a surface with genus g and n boundary components and let d(S) = 3g-3+n denote the number of curves in any pants decomposition of S. We employ metric properties of the graph of pants decompositions CP(S) prove that the Weil-Petersson metric on Teichmuller space Teich(S) is Gromov-hyperbolic if and only if d(S) <= 2. When d(S) >= 3 the Weil-Petersson metric has higher rank in the sense of Gromov (it admits a quasi-isometric embedding of R^k, k >= 2); when d(S) <= 2 we combine the hyperbolicity of the complex of curves and the relative hyperbolicity of CP(S) prove Gromov-hyperbolicity. W…
In this article we prove that the set of torsion-free groups acting by isometries on a hyperbolic metric space whose entropy is bounded above and with a compact quotient is finite. The number of such groups can be estimated in terms of the hyperbolicity constant and of an upper bound of the entropy of the space and of an upper bound of the diameter of its quotient. As a consequence we show that the set of non cyclic torsion-free $δ$-hyperbolic marked groups whose entropy is bounded above by a number $H$ is finite with cardinality depending on $δ$ and $H$ alone. From these results, we draw homo…
Let $Γ$ be a countable group acting on a geodesic Gromov-hyperbolic metric space $X$ and $μ$ a probability measure on $Γ$ whose support generates a non-elementary subsemigroup. Under the assumption that $μ$ has a finite exponential moment, we establish large deviations results for the distance and the translation length of a random walk with driving measure $μ$. From our results, we deduce a special case of a conjecture regarding large deviations of spectral radii of random matrix products.
We define analogues of the graphs of free splittings, of cyclic splittings, and of maximally-cyclic splittings of $F_N$ for free products of groups, and show their hyperbolicity. Given a countable group $G$ which splits as $G=G_1\ast\dots\ast G_k\ast F$, where $F$ denotes a finitely generated free group, we identify the Gromov boundary of the graph of relative cyclic splittings with the space of equivalence classes of $\mathcal{Z}$-averse trees in the boundary of the corresponding outer space. A tree is \emph{$\mathcal{Z}$-averse} if it is not compatible with any tree $T'$, that is itself comp…
It is well known that quasi-isometric embeddings of Gromov hyperbolic spaces induce topological embeddings of their Gromov boundaries. A more general question is to detect classes of functions between Gromov hyperbolic spaces that induce continuous maps between their Gromov boundaries. In this paper we introduce the class of visual functions $f$ that do induce continuous maps $\tilde f$ between Gromov boundaries. Its subclass, the class of radial functions, induces Hoelder maps between Gromov boundaries. Conversely, every Hoelder map between Gromov boundaries of visual hyperbolic spaces induce…
Let G be a countable group which acts by isometries on a separable, but not necessarily proper, Gromov hyperbolic space X. We say the action of G is weakly hyperbolic if G contains two independent hyperbolic isometries. We show that a random walk on such G converges to the Gromov boundary almost surely. We apply the convergence result to show linear progress and linear growth of translation length, without any assumptions on the moments of the random walk. If the action is acylindrical, and the random walk has finite entropy and finite logarithmic moment, we show that the Gromov boundary with …
These notes are the English version of the paper "Hyperbolicité du graphe des rayons et quasi-morphismes sur un gros groupe modulaire". The mapping class group Gamma of the complement of a Cantor set in the plane arises naturally in dynamics. We show that the ray graph, which is the analog of the complex of curves for this surface of infinite type, has infinite diameter and is hyperbolic. We use the action of Gamma on this graph to find an explicit non trivial quasimorphism on Gamma and to show that this group has infinite dimensional second bounded cohomology. Finally we give an example of a …
Motivated by computational aspects of persistent homology for Vietoris-Rips filtrations, we generalize a result of Eliyahu Rips on the contractibility of Vietoris-Rips complexes of geodesic spaces for a suitable parameter depending on the hyperbolicity of the space. We consider the notion of geodesic defect to extend this result to general metric spaces in a way that is also compatible with the filtration. We further show that for finite tree metrics the Vietoris-Rips complexes collapse to their corresponding subforests. We relate our result to modern computational methods by showing that thes…
We prove that the boundary of a right-angled hyperbolic building is a universal Menger space. Corollary: the 3-dimensional universal Menger space is the boundary of some Gromov-hyperbolic group.
The main result of this paper is that given a group $G$ acting geometrically by isometries on a CAT(0) space $X$ and a cyclic subgroup $H$ of $G$ generated by a rank-1 isometry of $X$, $H$ has bounded packing in $G$. We give two proofs of this result. The first one is by a characterization of rank-$1$ isometries by Hamenstadt. The second proof follows directly from some results of Dahmani-Guirardel-Osin and Sisto. Then using Mihailova's construction, we show the existence of a finitely generated subgroup of the direct product of two free groups $\mathbb F_2\times \mathbb F_2$ without the bound…
The ray graph is a Gromov hyperbolic graph on which the mapping class group of the plane minus a Cantor set acts by isometries. We give a description of the Gromov boundary of the ray graph in terms of cliques of long rays on the plane minus a Cantor set. As a consequence, we prove that the Gromov boundary of the ray graph is homeomorphic to a quotient of a subset of the circle. This version contains some updates and corrections.
The contracting boundary of a proper geodesic metric space generalizes the Gromov boundary of a hyperbolic space. It consists of contracting geodesics up to bounded Hausdorff distances. Another generalization of the Gromov boundary is the $κ$-Morse boundary with a sublinear function $κ$. The two generalizations model the Gromov boundary based on different characteristics of geodesics in Gromov hyperbolic spaces. It was suspected that the $κ$-Morse boundary contains the contracting boundary. We will prove this conjecture: when $κ=1$ is the constant function, the 1-Morse boundary and the contrac…
We describe, under some additional technical assumptions, the Gromov boundary of the free product of several $G_i$'s amalgamated wrt. $H$, where $G_i$ are hyperbolic groups with boundary homeomorphic to a densely punctured $n$-sphere, and $H$ is their common subgroup corresponding to a peripheral sphere in each of the $\partial G_i$'s.
We introduce a new quasi-isometry invariant of metric spaces called the hyperbolic dimension, hypdim, which is a version of the Gromov's asymptotic dimension, asdim. The hyperbolic dimension is at most the asymptotic dimension, however, unlike the asymptotic dimension, the hyperbolic dimension of any Euclidean space R^n is zero (while asdim R^n=n.) This invariant possesses usual properties of dimension like monotonicity and product theorems. Our main result says that the hyperbolic dimension of any Gromov hyperbolic space X (with mild restrictions) is at least the topological dimension of the …
We abstract the notion of an A/QI triple from a number of examples in geometric group theory. Such a triple (G,X,H) consists of a group G acting on a Gromov hyperbolic space X, acylindrically along a finitely generated subgroup H which is quasi-isometrically embedded by the action. Examples include strongly quasi-convex subgroups of relatively hyperbolic groups, convex cocompact subgroups of mapping class groups, many known convex cocompact subgroups of Out(Fn), and groups generated by powers of independent loxodromic WPD elements of a group acting on a Gromov hyperbolic space. We initiate the…
This paper is devoted to study of transformations on metric spaces. It is done in an effort to produce qualitative version of quasi-isometries which takes into account the asymptotic behavior of the Gromov product in hyperbolic spaces. We characterize a quotient semigroup of such transformations on Teichmüller space by use of simplicial automorphisms of the complex of curves, and we will see that such transformation is recognized as a "coarsification" of isometries on Teichmüller space which is rigid at infinity. We also show a hyperbolic characteristic that any finite dimensional Teichmüller …
We introduce a number of new tools for the study of relatively hyperbolic groups. First, given a relatively hyperbolic group G, we construct a nice combinatorial Gromov hyperbolic model space acted on properly by G, which reflects the relative hyperbolicity of G in many natural ways. Second, we construct two useful bicombings on this space. The first of these, "preferred paths", is combinatorial in nature and allows us to define the second, a relatively hyperbolic version of a construction of Mineyev. As an application, we prove a group-theoretic analog of the Gromov-Thurston 2πTheorem in the …