We develop a battery of tools for studying quasi-isometric rigidity and classification problems for splittings of groups. The techniques work best for finite graphs of groups where all edge and vertex groups are coarse PD groups. For example, if Gamma is a graph of coarse PD(n) groups for a fixed n, if the Bass-Serre tree of Gamma has infinitely many ends, and if H is a finitely generated group quasi-isometric to pi_1(Gamma), then we prove that H is the fundamental group of a graph of coarse PD(n) groups, with vertex and edge groups quasi-isometric to those of Gamma. We also have quasi-isometric rigidity theorems for graphs of coarse PD groups of nonconstant dimension, under various assumptions on the edge-to-vertex group inclusions.
This is an announcement of some of the results obtained as a part of the second author's Ph.D. thesis. In the first part, we prove that the fundamental group of an acylindrical complex of hyperbolic groups with finite edge groups is hyperbolic in which the vertex groups are quasiconvex. In the second part of the article, we prove the existence of Cannon-Thurston maps for certain subcomplexes of groups in acylindrical complexes of hyperbolic groups (see Theorem 0.4).
We say that a finitely generated group $G$ has property (QT) if it acts isometrically on a finite product of quasi-trees so that orbit maps are quasi-isometric embeddings. A quasi-tree is a connected graph with path metric quasi-isometric to a tree, and product spaces are equipped with the $\ell^1$-metric. As an application of the projection complex techniques, we prove that residually finite hyperbolic groups and mapping class groups have (QT).
We construct quasi-isometry invariants of a one-ended finitely presented group by considering the tree of cylinders of a two-ended JSJ decomposition of the group. When the group satisfies additional quasi-isometric rigidity hypotheses we construct finer invariants by also considering relative amounts of stretching across edges of the tree of cylinders.
Given a group acting on a graph quasi-isometric to a tree, we give sufficent conditions for a pseudocharacter to be bushy. We relate this with the conditions studied by M. Bestvina and K. Fujiwara on their work on bounded cohomology and obtain some results on the space of pseudocharacters.
A group G is acylindrically hyperbolic if it admits a non-elementary acylindrical action on a hyperbolic space. We prove that every acylindrically hyperbolic group G has a generating set X such that the corresponding Cayley graph is a (non-elementary) quasi-tree and the action of G on the Cayley graph is acylindrical. Our proof utilizes the notions of hyperbolically embedded subgroups and projection complexes. As a by-product, we obtain some new results about hyperbolically embedded subgroups and quasi-convex subgroups of acylindrically hyperbolic groups.
Given a bounded valence, bushy tree T, we prove that any cobounded quasi-action of a group G on T is quasiconjugate to an action of G on another bounded valence, bushy tree T'. This theorem has many applications: quasi-isometric rigidity for fundamental groups of finite, bushy graphs of coarse PD(n) groups for each fixed n; a generalization to actions on Cantor sets of Sullivan's Theorem about uniformly quasiconformal actions on the 2-sphere; and a characterization of locally compact topological groups which contain a virtually free group as a cocompact lattice. Finally, we give the first exam…
We study the group $QV$, the self-maps of the infinite $2$-edge coloured binary tree which preserve the edge and colour relations at cofinitely many locations. We introduce related groups $QF$, $QT$, $\tilde{Q}T$, and $\tilde{Q}V$, prove that $QF$, $\tilde{Q}T$, and $\tilde{Q}V$ are of type $\mathrm{F}_\infty$, and calculate finite presentations for them. We calculate the normal subgroup structure and rational homology of all $5$ groups, the Bieri--Neumann--Strebel--Renz invariants of $QF$, and discuss the relationship of all $5$ groups with other generalisations of Thompson's groups.
We prove several criteria for quasi-isometry between non-locally-finite graphs and their structure trees. Results of Möller in \cite{moeller92ends2} for locally finite and transitive graphs are generalized. We also give a criterion which describes quasi-isometry by how edge-ends are split up by the cuts of a structure tree.
We investigate the connections between tree amalgamations and quasi-isometries. In particular, we prove that the quasi-isometry type of multi-ended accessible quasi-transitive connected locally finite graphs is determined by the quasi-isometry type of their one-ended factors in any of their terminal factorisations. Our results carry over theorems of Papsoglu and Whyte on quasi-isometries between multi-ended groups to those between multi-ended graphs. In the end, we discuss the impact of our results to a question of Woess.
For a one-ended right-angled Artin group, we give an explicit description of its JSJ tree of cylinders over infinite cyclic subgroups in terms of its defining graph. This is then used to classify certain right-angled Artin groups up to quasi-isometry. In particular, we show that if two right-angled Artin groups are quasi-isometric, then their JSJ trees of cylinders are weakly equivalent. Although the converse to this is not generally true, we define quasi-isometry invariants known as stretch factors that can distinguish quasi-isometry classes of RAAGs with weakly equivalence JSJ trees of cylin…
We study the construction of quasimorphisms on groups acting on trees introduced by Monod and Shalom, that we call median quasimorphisms, and in particular we fully characterise actions on trees that give rise to non-trivial median quasimorphisms. Roughly speaking, either the action is highly transitive on geodesics, it fixes a point in the boundary, or there exists an infinite family of non-trivial median quasimorphisms. In particular, in the last case the second bounded cohomology of the group is infinite dimensional as a vector space. As an application, we show that a cocompact lattice in a…
A quasi-tree is a geodesic metric space quasi-isometric to a tree. We give a general construction of many actions of groups on quasi-trees. The groups we can handle include non-elementary (relatively) hyperbolic groups, rank 1 CAT(0) groups, mapping class groups and Out(Fn). As an application, we show that mapping class groups act on finite products of δ-hyperbolic spaces so that orbit maps are quasi-isometric embeddings. We prove that mapping class groups have finite asymptotic dimension.
Let X be a tree of proper geodesic spaces with edge spaces strongly contracting and uniformly separated from each other by a number depending on the contraction function of edge spaces. Then we prove that the strongly contracting geodesics in vertex spaces are quasiconvex in X. We further prove that in X if all the vertex spaces are uniformly hyperbolic metric spaces then X is a hyperbolic metric space and vertex spaces are quasiconvex in X.
We introduce two families of examples of groups acting on trees, one consisting of group amalgamations and the other consisting of HNN-extensions, motivated by the problems of $C^*$-simplicity and unique trace property. Moreover, we prove that our examples are not inner amenable and identify a relatively large, simple, normal subgroup in each one.
We prove some general results about quasi-actions on trees and define Property (QFA), which is analogous to Serre's Property (FA), but in the coarse setting. This property is shown to hold for a class of groups, including $SL(n,\Z)$ for $n\geq 3$. We also give a way of thinking about Property (QFA) by breaking it down into statements about particular classes of trees.
Bowditch's JSJ tree for splittings over 2-ended subgroups is a quasi-isometry invariant for 1-ended hyperbolic groups which are not cocompact Fuchsian. Our main result gives an explicit, computable "visual" construction of this tree for certain hyperbolic right-angled Coxeter groups. As an application of our construction we identify a large class of such groups for which the JSJ tree, and hence the visual boundary, is a complete quasi-isometry invariant, and thus the quasi-isometry problem is decidable. We also give a direct proof of the fact that among the Coxeter groups we consider, the coco…
Commability is the finest equivalence relation between locally compact groups such that $G$ and $H$ are equivalent whenever there is a continuous proper homomorphism $G \to H$ with cocompact image. Answering a question of Cornulier, we show that all non-elementary locally compact groups acting geometrically on locally finite simplicial trees are commable, thereby strengthening previous forms of quasi-isometric rigidity for trees. We further show that 6 homomorphisms always suffice, and provide the first example of a pair of locally compact groups which are commable but without commation consis…
We extend Burger--Mozes theory of closed, non-discrete, locally quasiprimitive automorphism groups of locally finite, connected graphs to the semiprimitive case, and develop a generalization of Burger--Mozes universal groups acting on the regular tree $T_{d}$ of degree $d\in\mathbb{N}_{\ge 3}$. Three applications are given: First, we characterize the automorphism types which the quasi-center of a non-discrete subgroup of $\mathrm{Aut}(T_{d})$ may feature in terms of the group's local~action. In doing so, we explicitly construct closed, non-discrete, compactly generated subgroups of $\mathrm{Au…
Leighton's Theorem states that if there is a tree $T$ that covers two finite graphs $G_1$ and $G_2$, then there is a finite graph $\hat G$ that is covered by $T$ and covers both $G_1$ and $G_2$. We prove that this result does not extend to regular covers by graphs other than trees. Nor does it extend to non-regular covers by a quasitree, even if the automorphism group of the quasitree contains a uniform lattice. But it does extend to regular coverings by quasitrees.
We characterise when there exists a quasiisometric embedding between two solvable Baumslag-Solitar groups. This extends the work of Farb and Mosher on quasiisometries between the same groups. More generally, we characterise when there can exist a quasiisometric embedding between two treebolic spaces. This allows us to determine when two treebolic spaces are quasiisometric, confirming a conjecture of Woess. The question of whether there exists a quasiisometric embedding between two treebolic spaces turns out to be equivalent to the question of whether there exists a bilipschitz embedding betwee…
Kashiwara's crystal graphs have a natural monoid structure that arises by identifying words labelling vertices that appear in the same position of isomorphic components. The celebrated plactic monoid (the monoid of Young tableaux), arises in this way from the crystal graph for the $q$-analogue of the general linear Lie algebra $\mathfrak{gl}_{n}$, and the so-called Kashiwara operators interact beautifully with the combinatorics of Young tableaux and with the Robinson--Schensted--Knuth correspondence. The authors previously constructed an analogous `quasi-crystal' structure for the related hypo…
This paper addresses questions of quasi-isometric rigidity and classification for fundamental groups of finite graphs of groups, under the assumption that the Bass-Serre tree of the graph of groups has finite depth. The main example of a finite depth graph of groups is one whose vertex and edge groups are coarse Poincare duality groups. The main theorem says that, under certain hypotheses, if G is a finite graph of coarse Poincare duality groups then any finitely generated group quasi-isometric to the fundamental group of G is also the fundamental group of a finite graph of coarse Poincare dua…
We prove the equivalence between a relative bottleneck property and being quasi-isometric to a tree-graded space. As a consequence, we deduce that the quasi-trees of spaces defined axiomatically by Bestvina-Bromberg-Fujiwara are quasi-isometric to tree-graded spaces. Using this we prove that mapping class groups quasi-isometrically embed into a finite product of simplicial trees. In particular, these groups have finite Assouad-Nagata dimension, direct embeddings exhibiting $\ell^p$ compression exponent $1$ for all $p\geq 1$ and they quasi-isometrically embed into $\ell^1(\mathbb N)$. We deduce…
An action of a group $G$ on a set $X$ is said to be quasi-n-transitive if the diagonal action of $G$ on $X^n$ has only finitely many orbits. We show that branch groups, a special class of groups of automorphisms of rooted trees, cannot act quasi-2-transitively on infinite sets.
This paper has two parts, on Baumslag-Solitar groups and on general G-trees. In the first part we establish bounds for stable commutator length (scl) in Baumslag-Solitar groups. For a certain class of elements, we further show that scl is computable and takes rational values. We also determine exactly which of these elements admit extremal surfaces. In the second part we establish a universal lower bound of 1/12 for scl of suitable elements of any group acting on a tree. This is achieved by constructing efficient quasimorphisms. Calculations in the group BS(2,3) show that this is the best poss…
We prove that the class of finitely presented inverse monoids whose Schützenberger graphs are quasi-isometric to trees has a uniformly solvable word problem, furthermore, the languages of their Schützenberger automata are context-free. On the other hand, we show that there is a finitely presented inverse monoid with hyperbolic Schützenberger graphs and an unsolvable word problem.
Quasi-isometric rigidity for random subsets in products of trees
School of Mathematical Sciences & Beijing International Center for Mathematical Research, Peking University（北京大学数学科学学院与北京国际数学研究中心）；School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University（北京大学数学科学学院）；Department of Mathematics, University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校数学系）
We prove that an arbitrary right-angled Artin group $G$ admits a quasi-isometric group embedding into a right-angled Artin group defined by the opposite graph of a tree. Consequently, $G$ admits quasi-isometric group embeddings into a pure braid group and into the area-preserving diffeomorphism groups of the 2--disk and the 2--sphere, answering questions due to Crisp--Wiest and M. Kapovich. Another corollary is that a pure braid group contains a closed hyperbolic manifold group as a quasi-isometrically embedded subgroup up to dimension eight. Finally, we show that the isomorphism problem, conj…
We show that the fundamental groups of any two closed irreducible non-geometric graph-manifolds are quasi-isometric. This answers a question of Kapovich and Leeb. We also classify the quasi-isometry types of fundamental groups of graph-manifolds with boundary in terms of certain finite two-colored graphs. A corollary is the quasi-isometry classification of Artin groups whose presentation graphs are trees. In particular any two right-angled Artin groups whose presentation graphs are trees of diameter at least 3 are quasi-isometric, answering a question of Bestvina; further, this quasi-isometry …
We show that every Gromov hyperbolic group $\Ga$ admits a quasi-isometric embedding into the product of $(n+1)$ binary trees, where $n=\dim\di\Ga$ is the topological dimension of the boundary at infinity of $\Ga$.
We prove that a finitely generated, right-angled, hyperbolic Coxeter group can be quasiisometrically embedded into the product of n binary trees, where n is the chromatic number of the group. As application we obtain certain strongly aperiodic tilings of the Davis complex of these groups.
