The aim of these notes is to connect the theory of hyperbolic and relatively hyperbolic groups to the theory of manifolds and Kleinian groups. We also give definitions and many examples of relatively hyperbolic groups and their boundaries. We survey some of the extensive work that has been done in the field. These notes are based on lectures given by the third author at CIRM in the Summer of 2018.
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).
We introduce a new quasi-isometry invariant, called the divergence spectrum, to study finitely generated groups. We compare the concept of divergence spectrum with the other classical notions of divergence and we examine the divergence spectra of relatively hyperbolic groups. We show the existence of an infinite collection of right-angled Coxeter groups which all have exponential divergence but they all have different divergence spectra. We also study Morse boundaries of relatively hyperbolic groups and examine their connection with Bowditch boundaries.
In this paper we prove that if some relatively hyperbolic groups have Bowditch boundary homeomorphic to the $n$-sphere, then they are also relatively hyperbolic with respect to another set of parabolic subgroups and its Bowditch boundary is homeomorphic to the $n-1$-dimensional Sierpiński carpet.
We generalize a result of Paulin on the Gromov boundary of hyperbolic groups to the Morse boundary of proper, maximal hierarchically hyperbolic spaces admitting cocompact group actions by isometries. Namely we show that if the Morse boundaries of two such spaces each contain at least three points, then the spaces are quasi-isometric if and only if there exists a 2-stable, quasi-möbius homeomorphism between their Morse boundaries. Our result extends a recent result of Charney-Murray, who prove such a classification for CAT(0) groups, and is new for mapping class groups and the fundamental group…
In this expository note, we illustrate phenomena and conjectures about boundaries of hyperbolic groups by considering the special cases of certain amalgams of hyperbolic groups. While doing so, we describe fundamental results on hyperbolic groups and their boundaries by Bowditch and Haissinsky, along with special treatments for the boundaries of free groups by Otal and Cashen.
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.
In this paper, we study the Hausdorff dimension of the Floyd and Bowditch boundaries of a relatively hyperbolic group, and show that for the Floyd metric and shortcut metrics respectively, they are are both equal to a constant times the growth rate of the group. In the proof, we study a special class of conical points called uniformly conical points and establish that, in both boundaries, there exists a sequence of Alhfors regular sets with dimension tending to the Hausdorff dimension and these sets consist of uniformly conical points.
We show that the sublinearly Morse boundary of a CAT(0) cubical group with a factor system is well-defined up to homeomorphism with respect to the visual topology. The key tool used in the proof is a new topology on sublinearly Morse boundaries that is induced by group actions on hyperbolic spaces that are sufficiently nice, for example, largest acylindrical actions. Using the same techniques, we obtain a explicit description of this new topology on the sublinearly Morse boundary of any hierarchically hyperbolic group in terms of medians. Finally, we explicitly describe the sublinear Morse bou…
In this paper we prove a theorem describing the local topology of the boundary of a hyperbolic group in terms of its global topology: the boundary is locally simply connected if and only if the complement of any point in the boundary is simply connected. This generalises a theorem of Bestvina and Mess.
We prove the existence of Cannon-Thurston maps for Kleinian groups corresponding to pared manifolds whose boundary is incompressible away from cusps. We also describe the structure of these maps in terms of ending laminations.
We show that a one-ended simply connected at infinity hyperbolic group $G$ with enough codimension-1 surface subgroups has $\partial G \cong \mathbb{S}^2$. Combined with a result of Markovic, our result gives a new characterization of virtually fundamental groups of hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Keywords: CAT(0) cube complexes, Hyperbolic groups, hyperbolic 3-manifolds.
Suppose a group $G$ is relatively hyperbolic with respect to a collection $\PP$ of its subgroups and also acts properly, cocompactly on a $\CAT(0)$ (or $δ$--hyperbolic) space $X$. The relatively hyperbolic structure provides a relative boundary $\partial(G,\PP)$. The $\CAT(0)$ structure provides a different boundary at infinity $\partial X$. In this article, we examine the connection between these two spaces at infinity. In particular, we show that $\partial (G,\PP)$ is $G$--equivariantly homeomorphic to the space obtained from $\partial X$ by identifying the peripheral limit points of the sam…
We construct hyperbolic groups with the following properties: The boundary of the group has big dimension, it is separated by a Cantor set and the group does not split. This shows that Bowditch's theorem that characterizes splittings of hyperbolic groups over 2-ended groups in terms of the boundary can not be extended to splittings over more complicated subgroups.
We demonstrate the quasi-isometry invariance of two important geometric structures for relatively hyperbolic groups: the coned space and the cusped space. As applications, we produce a JSJ-decomposition for relatively hyperbolic groups which is invariant under quasi-isometries and outer automorphisms, as well as a related splitting of the quasi-isometry groups of relatively hyperbolic groups.
We show that trees of manifolds, the topological spaces introduced by Jakobsche, appear as boundaries at infinity of various spaces and groups. In particular, they appear as Gromov boundaries of some hyperbolic groups, of arbitrary dimension, obtained by the procedure of strict hyperbolization. We also recognize these spaces as boundaries of arbitrary Coxeter groups with manifold nerves, and as Gromov boundaries of the fundamental groups of singular spaces obtained from some finite volume hyperbolic manifolds by cutting off their cusps and collapsing the resulting boundary tori to points.
We describe the kernel of the canonical map from the Floyd boundary of a relatively hyperbolic group to its Bowditch boundary. Using our methods we then prove that a finitely generated group $H$ admitting a quasi-isometric map $ϕ$ into a relatively hyperbolic group $G$ is relatively hyperbolic with respect to a system of subgroups whose image under $ϕ$ is situated in a uniformly bounded distance from the parabolic subgroups of $G$.
We consider splittings of groups over finite and two-ended subgroups. We study the combinatorics of such splittings using generalisations of Whitehead graphs. In the case of hyperbolic groups, we relate this to the topology of the boundary. In particular, we give a proof that the boundary of a one-ended strongly accessible hyperbolic group has no global cut point.
Let G be a group acting geometrically on a CAT(0) cube complex X. We prove first that G is hyperbolic relative to the collection P of subgroups if and only if the simplicial boundary of X is the disjoint union of a nonempty discrete set, together with a pairwise-disjoint collection of subcomplexes corresponding, in the appropriate sense, to elements of P. As a special case of this result is a new proof, in the cubical case, of a Theorem of Hruska--Kleiner regarding Tits boundaries of relatively hyperbolic CAT(0) spaces. Second, we relate the existence of cut-points in asymptotic cones of a cub…
Coning off a collection of uniformly quasiconvex subsets of a Gromov hyperbolic space leaves a new space, called the cone-off. Kapovich and Rafi generalized work of Bowditch to show this space is still Gromov hyperbolic. We show that the Gromov boundary of cone-off embeds in the boundary of the original hyperbolic space. (A stronger version of this result was previously obtained by Dowdall and Taylor; see Note in text.) Moreover, under some acylindricity assumptions we give a precise description of the image. As an application, we are able to characterize the elliptic and loxodromic elements o…
There is a family of hyperbolic groups known as hyperbolic hydra which contain heavily distorted free subgroups. We prove the existence of Cannon--Thurston maps (that is, maps of the boundaries induced by subgroup inclusion) for these free subgroups. It is known that Cannon--Thurston maps between hyperbolic space boundaries can exist even in the presence of arbitrarily heavy (even non-recursive) distortion. The hyperbolic hydra examples show that Cannon--Thurston maps can exist even between hyperbolic group boundaries in the presence of arbitrarily heavy primitive recursive distortion.
Suppose a finitely generated group $G$ is hyperbolic relative to $\mathcal P$ a set of proper finitely generated subgroups of $G$. Established results in the literature imply that a "visual" metric on $\partial (G,\mathcal P)$ is "linearly connected" if and only if the boundary $\partial (G,\mathcal P)$ has no cut point. Our goal is to produce linearly connected metrics on $\partial (G,\mathcal P)$ that are "piecewise" visual when $\partial (G,\mathcal P)$ contains cut points. %Visual metrics for $\partial (G,\mathcal P)$ are tightly linked to inner products of geodesic rays in "cusped" spaces…
Given a complex of groups over a finite simplicial complex in the sense of Haefliger, we give conditions under which it is possible to build an EZ-structure in the sense of Farrell-Lafont for its fundamental group out of such structures for its local groups. As an application, we prove a combination theorem that yields a procedure for getting hyperbolic groups as fundamental groups of simple complexes of hyperbolic groups. The construction provides a description of the Gromov boundary of such groups.
We investigate the relationship between the metric boundary and the Gromov boundary of a hyperbolic metric space. We show that the Gromov boundary is a quotient topological space of the metric boundary, and that therefore a word-hyperbolic group has an amenable action on the metric boundary of its Cayley graph. This result has significance for the study of Lip-norms on group C*-algebras.
Let $Γ$ be a relatively hyperbolic group and let $μ$ be an admissible symmetric finitely supported probability measure on $Γ$. We extend Floyd-Ancona type inequalities up to the spectral radius of $μ$. We then show that when the parabolic subgroups are virtually abelian, the Martin boundary of the induced random walk on $Γ$ is stable in the sense of Picardello and Woess. We also define a notion of spectral degenerescence along parabolic subgroups and give a criterion for strong stability of the Martin boundary in terms of spectral degenerescence. We prove that this criterion is always satisfie…
Hierarchically hyperbolic spaces provide a common framework for studying mapping class groups of finite type surfaces, Teichmüller space, right-angled Artin groups, and many other cubical groups. Given such a space $\mathcal X$, we build a bordificationcompatible with the hierarchically hyperbolic structure. If $\mathcal X$ is proper, we get a compactification of $\mathcal X$; we also prove that our construction generalizes the Gromov boundary of a hyperbolic space. In our first main set of applications, we introduce a notion of geometrical finiteness for hierarchically hyperbolic subgroups of…
We study the Bowditch boundaries of relatively hyperbolic group pairs, focusing on the case where there are no cut points. We show that if $(G,\mathcal{P})$ is a rigid relatively hyperbolic group pair whose boundary embeds in $S^2$, then the action on the boundary extends to a convergence group action on $S^2$. More generally, if the boundary is connected and planar with no cut points, we show that every element of $\mathcal{P}$ is virtually a surface group. This conclusion is consistent with the conjecture that such a group $G$ is virtually Kleinian. We give numerous examples to show the nece…
In this article, we discuss the quasiconformal structure of boundaries of right-angled hyperbolic buildings using combinatorial tools. In particular we exhibit some examples of buildings of dimension 3 and 4 whose boundaries satisfy the combinatorial Loewner property. This property is a weak version of the Loewner property. This is motivated by the fact that the quasiconformal structure of the boundary led to many results of rigidity in hyperbolic spaces since G.D. Mostow. In the case of buildings of dimension 2, many work have been done by M. Bourdon and H. Pajot. In particular, the Loewner p…
Given a group $G$ acting geometrically on a systolic complex $X$ and a hyperbolic isometry $h \in G$, we study the associated action of $h$ on the systolic boundary $\partial X$. We show that $h$ has a canonical pair of fixed points on the boundary and that it acts trivially on the boundary if and only if it is virtually central. The key tool that we use to study the action of $h$ on $\partial X$ is the notion of a $K$-displacement set of $h$, which generalises the classical minimal displacement set of $h$. We also prove that systolic complexes equipped with a geometric action of a group are a…
We prove that the class of convex-cocompact Kleinian groups is quasi-isometrically rigid. We also establish that a word hyperbolic group with a planar boundary different from the sphere is virtually a convex-cocompact Kleinian group provided that its boundary has Ahlfors regular conformal dimension strictly less than $2$ or if it acts geometrically on a CAT(0) cube complex.
A seminal result in geometric group theory is that a 1-ended hyperbolic group has a locally connected visual boundary. As a consequence, a 1-ended hyperbolic group also has a path connected visual boundary. In this paper, we study when this phenomenon occurs for CAT(0) groups. We show if a 1-ended CAT(0) group with isolated flats acts geometrically on a CAT(0) space, then the visual boundary of the space is path connected. As a corollary, we prove all CAT(0) groups with isolated flats are semistable at infinity.
We begin an investigation into the behavior of Bowditch and Gromov boundaries under the operation of Dehn filling. In particular we show many Dehn fillings of a toral relatively hyperbolic group with 2-sphere boundary are hyperbolic with 2-sphere boundary. As an application, we show that the Cannon conjecture implies a relatively hyperbolic version of the Cannon conjecture.
Let $Γ$ be a non-elementary hyperbolic group and $μ$ be a probability on $Γ$. We study the $μ$-proximal, stationary actions, also known as boundary actions, of $Γ$. In particular, we are interested in the spectrum of Furstenberg entropies of $(Γ,μ)$-boundaries, and the lattice-theoretic and topological structure of the set $\mathcal{BL}(Γ,μ)$ of boundaries. We prove that all hyperbolic groups have infinitely many distinct boundaries, which attain an infinite set of distinct entropies. Additionally, for simple random walks on non-abelian free groups $F_d$, we establish that there are infinitely…
We prove that the fundamental group of a finite graph of convergence groups with parabolic edge groups is a convergence group. Using this result, under some mild assumptions, we prove a combination theorem for a graph of convergence groups with dynamically quasi-convex edge groups (Theorem 1.3). To prove these results, we use a modification of Dahmani's technique [Dah03]. Then we show that the fundamental group of a graph of relatively hyperbolic groups with edge groups either parabolic or infinite cyclic is relatively hyperbolic and construct Bowditch boundary. Finally, we show that the homeo…
A continuous equivariant map from the Floyd boundary of a relatively hyperbolic group (RHG for short) to its Bowditch boundary is constructed. Such a map is unique unless the group is two-ended. In order to optimize the proof and the usage of the map theorem we propose two new definitions of relative hyperbolicity equivalent to the other known definitions. In our approach some "visibility" conditions in graphs are essential. We introduce a class of "visibility actions" that contains the class of relatively hyperbolic actions. The convergence property still holds for the visibility actions. We …
The purpose of the present paper is to prove existence of super-exponentially many compact orientable hyperbolic arithmetic $n$-manifolds that are geometric boundaries of compact orientable hyperbolic $(n+1)$-manifolds, for any $n \geq 2$, thereby establishing that these classes of manifolds have the same growth rate with respect to volume as all compact orientable hyperbolic arithmetic $n$-manifolds. An analogous result holds for non-compact orientable hyperbolic arithmetic $n$-manifolds of finite volume that are geometric boundaries, for $n \geq 2$.
In this paper we show that if $Y=N \times \mathbb{Q}_m$ is a metric space where $N$ is a Carnot group endowed with the Carnot-Caratheodory metric then any quasisymmetric map of $Y$ is actually bilipschitz. The key observation is that $Y$ is the parabolic visual boundary of a mixed type locally compact amenable hyperbolic group. The same results also hold for a larger class of nilpotent Lie groups $N$. As part of the proof we also obtain partial quasi-isometric rigidity results for mixed type locally compact amenable hyperbolic groups. Finally we prove a rigidity result for uniform subgroups of…
We study quasi-isometry invariants of Gromov hyperbolic spaces, focussing on the l_p-cohomology and closely related invariants such as the conformal dimension, combinatorial modulus, and the Combinatorial Loewner Property. We give new constructions of continuous l_p-cohomology, thereby obtaining information about the l_p-equivalence relation, as well as critical exponents associated with l_p-cohomology. As an application, we provide a flexible construction of hyperbolic groups which do not have the Combinatorial Loewner Property, extending and complementing earlier examples. Another consequenc…
