Filling length measures the length of the contracting closed loops in a null-homotopy. The filling length function of Gromov for a finitely presented group measures the filling length as a function of length of edge-loops in the Cayley 2-complex. We give a bound on the filling length function in terms of the log of an isoperimetric function multiplied by a (simultaneously realisable) isodiametric function.
We prove that every finitely presentable group G arises as the fundamental group of an orientable 3-complex obtained from a hyperbolic link complement, by coning each boundary torus of the link exterior to a distinct point. We define the closed-link-genus, clg(G), of any finitely presentable group G, which completely characterizes fundamental groups of closed orientable 3-manifolds: clg(G)=0 if and only if G is the fundamental group of a closed orientable 3-manifold. Moreover clg(G) gives an upper bound for the concept `genus(G)' of genus defined earlier by Aitchison and Reeves, and in turn is…
We exhibit classes of groups in which the word problem is uniformly solvable but in which there is no algorithm that can compute finite presentations for finitely presentable subgroups. Direct products of hyperbolic groups, groups of integer matrices, and right-angled Coxeter groups form such classes. We discuss related classes of groups in which there does exist an algorithm to compute finite presentations for finitely presentable subgroups. We also construct a finitely presented group that has a polynomial Dehn function but in which there is no algorithm to compute the first Betti number of …
In this paper it is shown how to construct a finite topological space $X$ for a given finitely presentable group $G$ such that $π_1(X)\cong G$. Our construction is not optimal in the sense that the cardinality of the space $X$ might not be the smallest possible. Our main result applies to a large class of interesting groups, including all finite groups.
We give simple examples of Kazhdan groups with infinite outer automorphism groups. This answers a question of Paulin, independently answered by Ollivier and Wise by completely different methods. As arithmetic lattices in (non-semisimple) Lie groups, our examples are in addition finitely presented. We also use results of Abels about compact presentability of p-adic groups to exhibit a finitely presented non-Hopfian Kazhdan group. This answers a question of Ollivier and Wise.
We demonstrate under appropriate finiteness conditions that a coarse embedding induces an inequality of homological Dehn functions. Applications of the main results include a characterization of what finitely presentable groups may admit a coarse embedding into a hyperbolic group of geometric dimension $2$, characterizations of finitely presentable subgroups of groups with quadratic Dehn function with geometric dimension $2$, and to coarse embeddings of nilpotent groups into other nilpotent groups of the same growth and into hyperbolic groups.
In this paper we study obstructions to presentability by products for finitely generated groups. Along the way we develop both the concept of acentral subgroups, and the relations between presentability by products on the one hand, and certain geometric and measure or orbit equivalence invariants of groups on the other. This leads to many new examples of groups not presentable by products, including all groups with infinitely many ends, the (outer) automorphism groups of free groups, Thompson's groups, and even some elementary amenable groups.
Let $G$ be a finitely presented group. A new complexity called \textit{Karoubi-Weibel complexity} or \textit{covering type}, is defined for $G$. The construction is inspired by recent work of Karoubi and Weibel \cite{KW}, initially applied to topological spaces. We introduce a similar notion in combinatorial form in order to apply it to finitely presentable groups. Some properties of this complexity as well as a few examples of calculation/estimation for certain classes of finitely presentable groups are considered. Finally we give a few applications of complexity to some geometric problems, n…
We prove that the finitely presentable subgroups of residually free groups are separable and that the subgroups of type $\mathrm{FP}_\infty$ are virtual retracts. We describe a uniform solution to the membership problem for finitely presentable subgroups of residually free groups.
We show that there is no algorithm deciding whether the maximal residually free quotient of a given finitely presented group is finitely presentable or not. Given a finitely generated subgroup G of a finite product of limit groups, we discuss the possibility of finding an explicit set of defining equations (i.e. of expressing G as the maximal residually free quotient of an explicit finitely presented group).
We show that being finitely presentable and being finitely presentable with solvable word problem are quasi-isometry invariants of finitely generated left cancellative monoids. Our main tool is an elementary, but useful, geometric characterisation of finite presentability for left cancellative monoids. We also give examples to show that this characterisation does not extend to monoids in general, and indeed that properties such as solvable word problem are not isometry invariants for general monoids.
We review the Burghelea conjecture, which constitutes a full computation of the periodic cyclic homology of complex group rings, and its relation to the algebraic Baum-Connes conjecture. The Burghelea conjecture implies the Bass conjecture. We state two conjectures about groups of finite asymptotic dimension, which together imply the Burghelea conjecture for such groups. We prove both conjectures for many classes of groups. It is known that the Burghelea conjecture does not hold for all groups, although no finitely presentable counter-example was known. We construct a finitely presentable (eve…
In 1985, Dunwoody showed that finitely presentable groups are accessible. Dunwoody's result was used to show that context-free groups, groups quasi-isometric to trees or finitely presentable groups of asymptotic dimension 1 are virtually free. Using another theorem of Dunwoody of 1979, we study when a group is virtually free in terms of its Cayley graph and we obtain new proofs of the mentioned results and other previously depending on them.
In various classes of infinite groups, we identify groups that are presentable by products, i.e. groups having finite index subgroups which are quotients of products of two commuting infinite subgroups. The classes we discuss here include groups of small virtual cohomological dimension and irreducible Zariski dense subgroups of appropriate algebraic groups. This leads to applications to groups of positive deficiency, to fundamental groups of three-manifolds and to Coxeter groups. For finitely generated groups presentable by products we discuss the problem of whether the factors in a presentati…
Bumagin-Wise posed the question of whether every countable group can be realised as the outer automorphism group of a finitely generated, residually finite group. We give a partial answer to this problem for recursively presentable groups.
Wreath products such as Z wr Z are not finitely-presentable yet can occur as subgroups of finitely presented groups. Here we compute the distortion of Z wr Z as a subgroup of Thompson's group F and as a subgroup of Baumslag's metabelian group G. We find that Z wr Z is undistorted in F but is at least exponentially distorted in G.
Motivated by a question of Bumagin and Wise, we construct a continuum of finitely generated, residually finite groups whose outer automorphism groups are pairwise non-isomorphic finitely generated, non-recursively-presentable groups. These are the first examples of such residually finite groups.
We describe various classes of infinitely presented groups that are condensation points in the space of marked groups. A well-known class of such groups consists of finitely generated groups admitting an infinite minimal presentation. We introduce here a larger class of condensation groups, called infinitely independently presentable groups, and establish criteria which allow one to infer that a group is infinitely independently presentable. In addition, we construct examples of finitely generated groups with no minimal presentation, among them infinitely presented groups with Cantor-Bendixson…
We fix a finitely presented group $Q$ and consider short exact sequences $1\to N\to G\to Q\to 1$ with $G$ finitely generated. The inclusion $N\to G$ induces a morphism of profinite completions $\hat N\to \hat G$. We prove that this is an isomorphism for all $N$ and $G$ if and only if $Q$ is super-perfect and has no proper subgroups of finite index. We prove that there is no algorithm that, given a finitely presented, residually finite group $G$ and a finitely presentable subgroup $P\subset G$, can determine whether or not $\hat P\to\hat G$ is an isomorphism.
We provide a new method of constructing non-quasiconvex subgroups of hyperbolic groups by utilizing techniques inspired by Stallings' foldings. The hyperbolic groups constructed are in the natural class of right-angled Coxeter groups (RACGs for short) and can be chosen to be 2-dimensional. More specifically, given a non-quasiconvex subgroup of a (possibly non-hyperbolic) RACG, our construction gives a corresponding non-quasiconvex subgroup of a hyperbolic RACG. We use this to construct explicit examples of non-quasiconvex subgroups of hyperbolic RACGs including subgroups whose generators are a…
Filling functions are asymptotic invariants of finitely presentable groups; the seminal work on the subject is by M.Gromov. They record features of combinatorial homotopy discs (van Kampen diagrams) filling loops in Cayley 2-complexes. Examples are the Dehn (or isoperimetric) function, the filling length function and the intrinsic diameter (or isodiametric) function. We discuss filling functions from geometric, combinatorial and computational points of view, we survey their interrelationships, and we sketch their roles in the studies of nilpotent groups, hyperbolic groups and asymptotic cones.…
Let Γbe a finitely presentable pro-p group with a nontrivial finitely generated closed normal subgroup N of infinite index. Then def(Γ)\leq 1, and if def(Γ)=1 then Γis a pro-p duality group of dimension 2, N is a free pro-p group and Γ/N is virtually free. In particular, if the centre of Γis nontrivial and def(Γ)\geq 1, then def(Γ)=1, cd G \leq 2 and Γis virtually a direct product F \times Z_p, with F a finitely generated free pro-p group.
A group is SimpHAtic if it acts geometrically on a simply connected simplicially hereditarily aspherical (SimpHAtic) complex. We show that finitely presented normal subgroups of the SimpHAtic groups are either: finite, or of finite index, or virtually free. This result applies, in particular, to normal subgroups of systolic groups. We prove similar strong restrictions on group extensions for other classes of asymptotically aspherical groups. The proof relies on studying homotopy types at infinity of groups in question. We also show that nonuniform lattices in SimpHAtic complexes (and in more g…
A result of Bridson, Howie, Miller and Short states that if $S$ is a subgroup of type $FP_{n}(\mathbb{Q})$ of the direct product of $n$ limit groups over free groups, then $S$ is virtually the direct product of limit groups over free groups. Furthermore, they characterise finitely presented residually free groups. In this paper these results are generalised to limit groups over Droms right-angled Artin groups. Droms RAAGs are the right-angled Artin groups with the property that all of their finitely generated subgroups are again RAAGs. In addition, we show that the generalised conjugacy proble…
Given a universal elementary Chevalley-Demazure group $E_Φ^{sc}(R)$ for which its (standard) parabolic subgroups are finitely generated, we consider the problem of classifying which parabolics $P(R) \subset E_Φ^{sc}(R)$ are finitely presented. We show that, under mild assumptions, this is equivalent to the finite presentability of a suitable retract of $P$ which contains the Levi factor. If the base ring $R$ is a Dedekind domain of arithmetic type, we combine our results with well-known theorems due to Borel-Serre, Abels, Behr and Bux to give a partial classification of finitely presentable $S…
We present novel constructions concerning the homology of finitely generated groups. Each construction draws on ideas of Gilbert Baumslag. There is a finitely presented acyclic group $U$ such that $U$ has no proper subgroups of finite index and every finitely presented group can be embedded in $U$. There is no algorithm that can determine whether or not a finitely presentable subgroup of a residually finite, biautomatic group is perfect. For every recursively presented abelian group $A$ there exists a pair of groups $i:P_A\hookrightarrow G_A$ such that $i$ induces an isomorphism of profinite c…
We examine the relationship between finitely and infinitely generated relatively hyperbolic groups, in two different contexts. First, we elaborate on a remark from math.GR/0601311, which states that the version of Dehn filling in relatively hyperbolic groups proved in math.GR/0510195, allowing infinitely generated parabolic subgroups, follows from the version with finitely generated parabolics. Second, we observe that direct limits of relatively hyperbolic groups are in fact direct limits of finitely generated relatively hyperbolic groups. We use this (and known results) to derive some consequ…
A new pair of asymptotic invariants for finitely presented groups, called intrinsic and extrinsic tame filling functions, are introduced. These filling functions are quasi-isometry invariants that strengthen the notions of intrinsic and extrinsic diameter functions for finitely presented groups. We show that the existence of a (finite-valued) tame filling function implies that the group is tame combable. Bounds on both intrinsic and extrinsic tame filling functions are discussed for stackable groups, including groups with a finite complete rewriting system, Thompson's group F, and almost conve…
In the paper, a method of describing the outer derivations of the group algebra of a finitely presentable group is given. The description of derivations is given in terms of characters of the groupoid of the adjoint action of the group.
A closed totally geodesic surface in the figure eight knot complement remains incompressible in all but finitely many Dehn fillings. In this paper, we show that there is no universal upper bound on the number of such fillings, independent of the surface. This answers a question of Ying-Qing Wu.
We give an example of a monoid with finitely many left and right ideals, all of whose Schutzenberger groups are presentable by finite complete rewriting systems, and so each have finite derivation type, but such that the monoid itself does not have finite derivation type, and therefore does not admit a presentation by a finite complete rewriting system. The example also serves as a counterexample to several other natural questions regarding complete rewriting systems and finite derivation type. Specifically it allows us to construct two finitely generated monoids M and N with isometric Cayley …
The homological and homotopical Dehn functions are different ways of measuring the difficulty of filling a closed curve inside a group or a space. The homological Dehn function measures fillings of cycles by chains, while the homotopical Dehn function measures fillings of curves by disks. Since the two definitions involve different sorts of boundaries and fillings, there is no a priori relationship between the two functions, but prior to this work there were no known examples of finitely-presented groups for which the two functions differ. This paper gives the first such examples, constructed …
A group is known as `large' if some finite index subgroup admits a surjective homomorphism onto a non-abelian free group. The main theorem of the paper is as follows. Let G be a finitely generated, large group and let g_1,...,g_r be a collection of elements of G. Then G/<<g_1^n,...,g_r^n>> is also large, for infinitely many integers n. Furthermore, when G is free, this holds for all but finitely many n. These results have the following application to Dehn surgery. Let M be a compact orientable 3-manifold with boundary a torus. Suppose that the 3-manifold obtained by Dehn filling some slope on …
The diameter of a disc filling a loop in the universal covering of a Riemannian manifold may be measured extrinsically using the distance function on the ambient space or intrinsically using the induced length metric on the disc. Correspondingly, the diameter of a van Kampen diagram filling a word that represents the identity in a finitely presented group can either be measured intrinsically its 1-skeleton or extrinsically in the Cayley graph of the group. We construct the first examples of closed manifolds and finitely presented groups for which this choice -- intrinsic versus extrinsic -- gi…
An element of a finitely generated non-Abelian free group F(X) is said to be filling if that element has positive translation length in every very small action of F(X) on an $\mathbb{R}$-tree. We give a proof that the set of filling elements of F(X) is exponentially F(X)-generic in the sense of Arzhantseva and Ol'shanskii. We also provide an algebraic sufficient condition for an element to be filling and show that there exists an exponentially F(X)-generic subset of filling elements whose membership problem is solvable in linear time.
We introduce a combinatorial property for finitely generated groups called stackable that implies the existence of an inductive procedure for constructing van Kampen diagrams with respect to a canonical finite presentation. We also define algorithmically stackable groups, for which this procedure is an effective algorithm. This property gives a common model for algorithms arising from both rewriting systems and almost convexity for groups. We also introduce a new pair of asymptotic invariants that are filling inequalities refining the notions of intrinsic and extrinsic diameter inequalities fo…
To every dynamical system $(X,φ)$ over a totally disconnected compact space, we associate a left-orderable group $T(φ)$. It is defined as a group of homeomorphisms of the suspension of $(X,φ)$ which preserve every orbit of the suspension flow and act by dyadic piecewise linear homeomorphisms in the flow direction. We show that if the system is minimal, the group is simple, and if it is a subshift then the group is finitely generated. The proofs of these two statements are short and elementary, providing straightforward examples of finitely generated simple left-orderable groups. We show that i…
We solve Dehn's isomorphism problem for virtually torsion-free relatively hyperbolic groups with nilpotent parabolic subgroups. We do so by reducing the isomorphism problem to three algorithmic problems in the parabolic subgroups, namely the isomorphism problem, separation of torsion (in their outer automorphism groups) by congruences, and the mixed Whitehead problem, an automorphism group orbit problem. The first step of the reduction is to compute canonical JSJ decompositions. Dehn fillings and the given solutions of the algorithmic problems in the parabolic groups are then used to decide if…
In this paper we provide a framework for the study of isoperimetric problems in finitely generated group, through a combinatorial study of universal covers of compact simplicial complexes. We show that, when estimating filling functions, one can restrict to simplicial spheres of particular shapes, called "round" and "unfolded", provided that a bounded quasi-geodesic combing exists. We prove that the problem of estimating higher dimensional divergence as well can be restricted to round spheres. Applications of these results include a combinatorial analogy of the Federer--Fleming inequality for …
We prove that every finitely generated nilpotent group of class c admits a polynomial isoperimetric function of degree c+1 and a linear upper bound on its filling length function.
We prove that if a finitely presented group acts properly discontinuously, cocompactly and by isometries on a simply connected Riemannian manifold, then the Dehn function of the group and the corresponding filling function of the manifold are equivalent, in a sense described below.
We give some connections between various functions defined on finitely presented groups (isoperimetric, isodiametric, Todd-Coxeter radius, filling length functions, etc.), and we study the relation between those functions and the computational complexity of the word problem (deterministic time, nondeterministic time, symmetric space). We show that the isoperimetric function can always be linearly decreased (unless it is the identity map). We present a new proof of the Double Exponential Inequality, based on context-free languages.
Motivated by the results of Scott and Patel about "untangling" closed geodesics in finite covers of hyperbolic surfaces, we introduce and study primitivity, simplicity and non-filling index functions for finitely generated free groups. We obtain lower bounds for these functions and relate these free group results back to the setting of hyperbolic surfaces. An appendix by Khalid Bou-Rabee connects the primitivity index function to the residual finiteness growth function for $F_N$.
We prove super-quadratic lower bounds for the growth of the filling area function of a certain class of Carnot groups. This class contains groups for which it is known that their Dehn function grows no faster than $n^2\log n$. We therefore obtain the existence of (finitely generated) nilpotent groups whose Dehn functions do not have exactly polynomial growth and we thus answer a well-known question about the possible growth rate of Dehn functions of nilpotent groups.