We obtain a number of finiteness results for groups acting on Gromov-hyperbolic spaces. In particular we show that a torsion-free locally quasiconvex hyperbolic group has only finitely many conjugacy classes of $n$-generated one-ended subgroups. We also show that the rank problem is solvable for the class of torsion-free locally quasiconvex hyperbolic groups (even though it is unsolvable for the class of all torsion-free hyperbolic groups). We apply our results to 3-manifold groups. Namely, suppose $G$ is the fundamental group of a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold fibering over a circle and suppose that all finitely generated subgroups of $G$ are topologically tame. We prove that for any $k\ge 2$ the group $G$ has only finitely many conjugacy classes of non-elementary freely indecomposable $k$-generated subgroups of infinite index in $G$.
For certain uncountable cardinals $κ$ we produce a group of cardinality $κ$ which is freely indecomposable, strongly $κ$-free, and whose abelianization is free abelian of rank $κ$. The construction takes place in Gödel's constructible universe $L$. This strengthens an earlier result of Eklof and Mekler.
Groups acting freely on Z^n-trees (Z^n-free groups) play a key role in the study of non-archimedean group actions. Following Stallings' ideas, we develop graph-theoretic techniques to investigate subgroup structure of Z^n-free groups. As an immediate application of the presented method, we give an effective solution to the Uniform Membership Problem and the Power Problem in Z^n-free groups.
We study blocks with an abelian defect group and a cyclic inertial quotient acting freely but not transitively. We prove that when p=2, such blocks are inertial, i.e. basic Morita equivalent to their Brauer correspondent. Together with a result of the second author on Singer cycle actions on homocyclic defect groups, this completes the classification of 2-blocks with a cyclic inertial quotient acting freely on an abelian defect group.
We prove an acylindrical accessibility theorem for finitely generated groups acting on $\mathbf R$-trees. Namely, we show that if $G$ is a freely indecomposable non-cyclic $k$-generated group acting minimally and $M$-acylindrically on an $\mathbf R$-tree $X$ then for any $ε>0$ there is a finite subtree $Y_ε\subseteq X$ of measure at most $2M(k-1)+ε$ such that $GY_ε=X$. This generalizes theorems of Z.Sela and T.Delzant about actions on simplicial trees.
We study the class of groups generated by automata that act essentially freely on the boundary of a rooted tree. In the process we establish and discuss some general tools for determining if a group belongs to this class, and explore the connections of this class to the classes of just-infinite and scale-invariant groups. Our main application is a complete classification of groups generated by 3-state automata over 2-letter alphabet that are in this class.
We give a simple proof of the finite presentation of Sela's limit groups by using free actions on R^n-trees. We first prove that Sela's limit groups do have a free action on an R^n-tree. We then prove that a finitely generated group having a free action on an R^n-tree can be obtained from free abelian groups and surface groups by a finite sequence of free products and amalgamations over cyclic groups. As a corollary, such a group is finitely presented, has a finite classifying space, its abelian subgroups are finitely generated and contains only finitely many conjugacy classes of non-cyclic ma…
We introduce certain directed multigraphs with extra structure, called Weyl graphs, which model quotients of Tits buildings by type-preserving chamber-free group actions. Their advantage over complexes of groups, which are often used for the CAT(0) Davis realization of buildings, is that Weyl graphs exploit the ultimate combinatorial W-metric structure of buildings. Weyl graphs generalize Tits's chambers systems of type M by allowing 2-residues to be quotients of generalized polygons by flag-free group actions, and Weyl graphs are easily constructed by amalgamating such quotients. We develop c…
A group is called $Λ$-free if it has a free Lyndon length function in an ordered abelian group $Λ$, which is equivalent to having a free isometric action on a $Λ$-tree. A group has a regular free length function in $Λ$ if and only if it has a free isometric action on a $Λ$-tree so that all branch points belong to the orbit of the base point. In this paper we prove that every finitely presented $Λ$-free group $G$ can be embedded into a finitely presented group with a regular free length function in $Λ$ so that the length function on $G$ is preserved by the embedding. Next, we prove that every f…
Let X be a locally compact geodesically complete CAT(0) space and G be a discrete group acting properly and cocompactly on X. We show that G contains an element acting as a hyperbolic isometry on each indecomposable de Rham factor of X. It follows that if X is a product of d factors, then G contains free abelian group of rank d.
Given an action of a group G on a topological space X, we establish a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a free subgroup F of rank 2 of G acting properly discontinuously on at least one nonempty, open, F-invariant subspace of X. In the case of a discrete topology (group action on a set X), the condition simply detects free subgroups of rank 2 acting freely on some orbit.
This is the first paper in a series of three where we take on the unified theory of non-Archimedean group actions, length functions and infinite words. Our main goal is to show that group actions on Z^n-trees give one a powerful tool to study groups. All finitely generated groups acting freely on -trees also act freely on some Z^n-trees, but the latter ones form a much larger class. The natural effectiveness of all constructions for $Z^n-actions (which is not the case for R-trees) comes along with a robust algorithmic theory. In this paper we describe the algebraic structure of finitely genera…
Let $G=A \ast B$ be a free product of freely indecomposable groups. We explicitly construct quasimorphisms on $G$ which are invariant with respect to all automorphisms of $G$. We also prove that the space of such quasimorphisms is infinite-dimensional whenever $G$ is not the infinite dihedral group. As an application we prove that an invariant analogue of stable commutator length recently introduced by Kawasaki and Kimura is non-trivial for these groups.
We provide some necessary and some sufficient conditions for the automorphism group of a free product of (freely indecomposable, not infinite cyclic) groups to have Property (FA). The additional sufficient conditions are all met by finite groups, and so this case is fully characterised. Therefore this paper generalises the work of Leder (arXiv:1810.06287) for finite cyclic groups, as well as resolving the open case of that paper.
Let $G=G_1\ast\dots\ast G_k\ast F$ be a countable group which splits as a free product, where all groups $G_i$ are freely indecomposable and not isomorphic to $\mathbb{Z}$, and $F$ is a finitely generated free group. If for all $i\in\{1,\dots,k\}$, both $G_i$ and its outer automorphism group $\text{Out}(G_i)$ satisfy the Tits alternative, then $\text{Out}(G)$ satisfies the Tits alternative. As an application, we prove that the Tits alternative holds for outer automorphism groups of right-angled Artin groups, and of torsion-free groups that are hyperbolic relative to a finite family of virtuall…
A finitely generated group admits a decomposition, called its Grushko decomposition, into a free product of freely indecomposable groups. There is an algorithm to construct the Grushko decomposition of a finite graph of finite rank free groups. In particular, it is possible to decide if such a group is free.
We introduce a class of spaces, called real cubings, and study the stucture of groups acting nicely on these spaces. Just as cubings are a natural generalisation of simplicial trees, real cubings can be regarded as a natural generalisation of real trees. Our main result states that a finitely generated group $G$ acts nicely (essentially freely and co-specially) on a real cubing if and only if it is a subgroup of a graph tower (a higher dimensional generalisation of $ω$-residually free towers and NTQ-groups). It follows that $G$ acts freely, essentially freely and co-specially on a real cubing …
Let $G$ be a group acting on a tree $T$ with finite edge stabilizers of bounded order. We provide, in some very interesting cases, upper bounds for the complexity of the intersection $H\cap K$ of two tame subgroups $H$ and $K$ of $G$ in terms of the complexities of $H$ and $K$. In particular, we obtain bounds for the Kurosh rank $Kr(H\cap K)$ of the intersection in terms of Kurosh ranks $Kr(H)$ and $Kr(K)$, in the case where $H$ and $K$ act freely on the edges of $T$.
Let $ϕ:G\to G$ be an automorphism of a group which is a free-product of finitely many groups each of which is freely indecomposable and two of the factors contain proper finite index characteristic subgroups. We show that $G$ has infinitely many $ϕ$-twisted conjugacy classes. As an application, we show that if $G$ is the fundamental group of a three-manifold that is not irreducible, then $G$ has property $R_\infty$, that is, there are infinitely many $ϕ$-twisted conjugacy classes in $G$ for every automorphism $ϕ$ of $G$.
We prove a partial generalization of Bonahon's tameness result to surfaces inside irreducible 3-manifolds with hyperbolic fundamental group. Bonahon's result states that geometrically infinite ends of freely indecomposable hyperbolic 3-manifolds are simply degenerate. It is easy to see that a geometrically infinite end gives rise to a sequence of curves on the corresponding surface whose geodesic representatives are not contained in any compact set. The main step in his proof is showing that one may assume that these curves are simple on the surface. In this paper, we generalize the main step …
We prove that for a one-ended hyperbolic graph $X$, the size of the quotient $X/G$ by a group $G$ acting freely and cocompactly bounds from below the number of simplices in an Eilenberg-MacLane space for $G$. We apply this theorem to show that one-ended hyperbolic cubulated groups (or more generally, one-ended hyperbolic groups with globally stable cylinders à la Rips-Sela) cannot contain isomorphic finite-index subgroups of different indices.
We construct an example of a torsion free freely indecomposable finitely presented non-quasiconvex subgroup $H$ of a word hyperbolic group $G$ such that the limit set of $H$ is not the limit set of a quasiconvex subgroup of $G$. In particular, this gives a counterexample to the conjecture of G.Swarup that a finitely presented one-ended subgroup of a word hyperbolic group is quasiconvex if and only if it has finite index in its virtual normalizer.
In this paper we start the inquiry into proving uniform exponential growth in the context of groups acting on CAT(0) cube complexes. We address free group actions on CAT(0) square complexes and prove a more general statement. This says that if $F$ is a finite collection of hyperbolic automorphisms of a CAT(0) square complex $X$, then either there exists a pair of words of length at most 10 in $F$ which freely generate a free semigroup, or all elements of $F$ stabilize a flat (of dimension 1 or 2 in $X$). As a corollary, we obtain a lower bound for the growth constant, $\sqrt[10]{2}$, which is …
We show that every group acting freely and vertex-transitively by isometries on a product of two regular trees of finite valence is boundary rigid. That means that every CAT(0) space that admits a geometric action of any such group has the visual boundary homeomorphic to a join of two copies of the Cantor set.
Suppose $G$ is a finite group acting on a projective scheme $X$ over a commutative Noetherian ring $R$. We study the $RG$-modules $\HH^0(X,\mathcal{F} \otimes \mathcal{L}^n)$ when $n \ge 0$, and $\mathcal{F}$ and $\mathcal{L}$ are coherent $G$-sheaves on $X$ such that $\mathcal{L}$ is an ample line bundle. We show that the classes of these modules in the Grothendieck group $G_0(RG)$ of all finitely generated $RG$-modules lie in a finitely generated subgroup. Under various hypotheses, we show that there is a finite set of indecomposable $RG$-modules such that each $\HH^0(X,\mathcal{F} \otimes \…
Haagerup's inequality for convolvers on free groups may be interpreted as a result on $\tA_1$ buildings, i.e. trees. Here are proved analogous inequalities for discrete groups acting freely on the vertices of $\tA_1\times\tA_1$ and $\tA_2$ buildings. The results apply in particular to groups of type-rotating automorphisms acting simply transitively on the vertices of such buildings. These results provide the first examples of higher rank groups with property (RD).
We provide a solution to the isomorphism problem for torsion-free relatively hyperbolic groups with abelian parabolics. As special cases we recover solutions to the isomorphism problem for: (i) torsion-free hyperbolic groups (Sela); and (ii) fully residually free groups (Bumagin, Kharlampovich and Miasnikov). We also give a solution to the homeomorphism problem for finite volume hyperbolic n-manifolds, for $n \ge 3$. In the course of the proof of the main result, we prove that a particular JSJ decomposition of a freely indecomposable torsion-free relatively hyperbolic group with abelian parabo…
In this paper we describe an elimination process which is a deterministic rewriting procedure that on each elementary step transforms one system of equations over free groups into a finitely many new ones. Infinite branches of this process correspond to cyclic splittings of the coordinate group of the initial system of equations. This allows us to construct algorithmically Grushko's decompositions of finitely generated fully residually free groups and cyclic [abelian] JSJ decompositions of freely indecomposable finitely generated fully residually free groups. We apply these results to obtain a…
The general {\bf surface group conjecture} asks whether a one-relator group where every subgroup of finite index is again one-relator and every subgroup of infinite index is free (property IF) is a surface group. We resolve several related conjectures given in [FKMRR]. First we obtain the Surface Group Conjecture B for cyclically pinched and conjugacy pinched one-relator groups. That is: if $G$ is a cyclically pinched one-relator group or conjugacy pinched one-relator group satisfying property IF then $G$ is free, a surface group or a solvable Baumslag-Solitar Group. Further combining results …
We study the analogue in orbit equivalence of free product decomposition and free indecomposability for countable groups. We introduce the (orbit equivalence invariant) notion of freely indecomposable ({\FI}) standard probability measure preserving equivalence relations and establish a criterion to check it, namely non-hyperfiniteness and vanishing of the first $L^2$-Betti number. We obtain Bass-Serre rigidity results, \textit{i.e.} forms of uniqueness in free product decompositions of equivalence relations with ({\FI}) components. The main features of our work are weak algebraic assumptions a…
Let G be the set of k-points of a connected semisimple algebraic group of k-rank one over a nonarchimedean local field k. We describe all finitely generated torsion-free discrete subgroups of G\times G acting properly discontinuously and cocompactly on G by left and right multiplication. We prove that after a small deformation in G\times G such a discrete subgroup keeps acting freely, properly discontinuously, and cocompactly on G. ----- Soit G l'ensemble des k-points d'un groupe algebrique semi-simple connexe de k-rang un sur un corps local ultrametrique k. Nous decrivons tous les sous-groupe…
Let G be a simple classical algebraic group over an algebraically closed field K of characteristic $p \ge 0$ with natural module W. Let H be a closed subgroup of G and let V be a nontrivial p-restricted irreducible tensor indecomposable rational KG-module such that the restriction of V to H is irreducible. In this paper we classify the triples (G,H,V) of this form, where $V \ne W, W^{*}$ and H is a disconnected almost simple positive-dimensional closed subgroup of G acting irreducibly on W. Moreover, by combining this result with earlier work, we complete the classification of the irreducible …
A non-plain virtually free group with a strictly 2-geodetic Cayley graph
Research Center in Mathematics and Applications (CIMA)（数学与应用研究中心）；Department of Mathematics, School of Sciences and Technology, University of Évora（埃武拉大学理科学院数学系）
Suppose an amenable group $G$ is acting freely on a simply connected simplicial complex $\tilde X$ with compact quotient $X$. Fix $n \geq 1$, assume $H_n(\tilde X, \mathbb{Z})=0$ and let $(H_i)$ be a Farber chain in $G$. We prove that the torsion of the integral homology in dimension $n$ of $\tilde{X}/H_i$ grows subexponentially in $[G:H_i]$. By way of contrast, if $X$ is not compact, there are solvable groups of derived length 3 for which torsion in homology can grow faster than any given function.
A group $G$ is said to be a {\it CSA}-group if all maximal abelian subgroups of $G$ are malnormal. The class of CSA groups is of interest because it contains torsion-free hyperbolic groups, groups acting freely on $Λ$-trees and groups with the same existential theory as free groups. CSA groups are also very closely related to the study of residually free groups and tensor completions. In this paper we investigate which free constructions (amalgamated products and HNN extensions) over CSA groups are again CSA. The results are applied, in particular, to show that a torsion-free one-relator group…
We show that if $G$ is a non-archimedean, Roelcke precompact, Polish group, then $G$ has Kazhdan's property (T). Moreover, if $G$ has a smallest open subgroup of finite index, then $G$ has a finite Kazhdan set. Examples of such $G$ include automorphism groups of countable $ω$-categorical structures, that is, the closed, oligomorphic permutation groups on a countable set. The proof uses work of the second author on the unitary representations of such groups, together with a separation result for infinite permutation groups. The latter allows the construction of a non-abelian free subgroup of $G…
