We prove that in various natural models of a random quotient of a group, depending on a density parameter, for each hyperbolic group there is some critical density under which a random quotient is still hyperbolic with high probability, whereas above this critical value a random quotient is very probably trivial. We give explicit characterizations of these critical densities for the various models.
We give a cohomological characterization of Gromov relative hyperbolicity. As an application we prove a converse to the combination theorem for graphs of relatively hyperbolic groups given in a previous paper of the first author. We build upon, and follow the ideas of, the work of S. Gersten in ``Cohom. lower bounds for isoperim. funct. on groups'' (Topology 37, 1998) about the same topics in the classical Gromov hyperbolic setting.
We prove a combination theorem for trees of (strongly) relatively hyperbolic spaces and finite graphs of (strongly) relatively hyperbolic groups. This gives a geometric extension of Bestvina and Feighn's Combination Theorem for hyperbolic groups and answers a question of Swarup. We also prove a converse to the main Combination Theorem.
The aim of this note is to show that weak relative hyperbolicity of a group relative to a subgroup (or relative hyperbolicity in the sense of Farb) does not imply any natural analogues of some well-known algebraic properties of ordinary hyperbolic groups. Our main tools are combination theorems for weakly relatively hyperbolic groups.
We propose the metric notion of strong hyperbolicity as a way of obtaining hyperbolicity with sharp additional properties. Specifically, strongly hyperbolic spaces are Gromov hyperbolic spaces that are metrically well-behaved at infinity, and, under weak geodesic assumptions, they are strongly bolic as well. We show that CAT(-1) spaces are strongly hyperbolic. On the way, we determine the best constant of hyperbolicity for the standard hyperbolic plane. We also show that the Green metric defined by a random walk on a hyperbolic group is strongly hyperbolic. A measure-theoretic consequence at t…
We prove that the group of outer automorphisms of the free Coxeter group $W_n$ is acylindrically hyperbolic in the sense of Osin. As an application, we observe that any CAT(0) space admitting a geometric action by Out($W_n$) must contain a rank-one geodesic. The theorem proceeds from expanding on a well-known relationship between Out($W_n$) and the outer automorphism group of free groups.
We provide a simple, combinatorial criteria for a hierarchically hyperbolic space to be relatively hyperbolic by proving a new formulation of relative hyperbolicity in terms of hierarchy structures. In the case of clean hierarchically hyperbolic groups, this criteria characterizes relative hyperbolicity. We apply our criteria to graphs associated to surfaces and prove that the separating curve graph of a surface is relatively hyperbolic when the surface has zero or two punctures. We also recover a celebrated theorem of Brock and Masur on the relative hyperbolicity of the Weil-Petersson metric …
We examine a graph $Γ$ encoding the intersection of hyperplane carriers in a CAT(0) cube complex $\widetilde X$. The main result is that $Γ$ is quasi-isometric to a tree. This implies that a group $G$ acting properly and cocompactly on $\widetilde X$ is weakly hyperbolic relative to the hyperplane stabilizers. Using disc diagram techniques and Wright's recent result on the aymptotic dimension of CAT(0) cube complexes, we give a generalization of a theorem of Bell and Dranishnikov on the finite asymptotic dimension of graphs of asymptotically finite-dimensional groups. More precisely, we prove …
We prove that every countable acylindrically hyperbolic group admits a highly transitive action with finite kernel. This theorem uniformly generalizes many previously known results and allows us to answer a question of Garion and Glassner on the existence of highly transitive faithful actions of mapping class groups. It also implies that in various geometric and algebraic settings, the transitivity degree of an infinite group can only take two values, namely $1$ and $\infty$. Here by transitivity degree of a group we mean the supremum of transitivity degrees of its faithful permutation represe…
Given a finite rank free group $\mathbb{F}$ of $\mathsf{rank}(\mathbb{F})\geq 3$, we show that the mapping torus of $ϕ$ is (strongly) relatively hyperbolic if $ϕ$ is exponentially growing. We combine our result with the work of Button-Kropholler to answer a question asked by Minasyan-Osin regarding the acylindrical hyperbolicity of such free-by-cyclic extensions. As an application we construct new examples of free-by-free hyperbolic extensions where the elements of the quotient group are not necessarily fully irreducible. We also give a new proof of the Bridson-Groves quadratic isoperimetric i…
We prove a combination theorem for hyperbolic groups, in the case of groups acting on complexes displaying combinatorial features reminiscent of non-positive curvature. Such complexes include for instance weakly systolic complexes and C'(1/6) small cancellation polygonal complexes. Our proof involves constructing a potential Gromov boundary for the resulting groups and analyzing the dynamics of the action on the boundary in order to use Bowditch's characterization of hyperbolicity. A key ingredient is the introduction of a combinatorial property that implies a weak form of non-positive curvatu…
We prove that for a free product $G$ with free factor system $\mathcal{G}$, any automorphism $ϕ$ preserving $\mathcal{G}$, atoroidal (in a sense relative to $\mathcal{G}$) and none of whose power send two different conjugates of subgroups in $\mathcal{G}$ on conjugates of themselves by the same element, gives rise to a semidirect product $G\rtimes_ϕ\mathbb{Z}$ that is relatively hyperbolic with respect to suspensions of groups in $\mathcal{G}$. We recover a theorem of Gautero-Lustig and Ghosh that, if $G$ is a free group, $ϕ$ an automorphism of $G$, and $\mathcal{G}$ is its family of polynomia…
In this article we exhibit the largest constant in a quadratic isoperimetric inequality which ensures that a geodesic metric space is Gromov hyperbolic. As a particular consequence we obtain that Euclidean space is a borderline case for Gromov hyperbolicity in terms of the isoperimetric function. We prove similar results for the linear filling radius inequality. Our results strengthen and generalize theorems of Gromov, Papasoglu and others.
We introduce the notions of geometric height and graded (geometric) relative hyperbolicity in this paper. We use these to characterize quasiconvexity in hyperbolic groups, relative quasiconvexity in relatively hyperbolic groups, and convex cocompactness in mapping class groups and $Out(F_n)$. Corrigendum: there is an unfortunate mistake in the statement and the proof of Proposition 5.1. This affects one direction of the implications of the main theorem. A correction is given, that states that given a quasi-convex subgroup of a hyperbolic (or relatively hyperbolic) group, the graded relative hy…
This article is dedicated to the study of the acylindrical hyperbolicity of automorphism groups of graph products of groups. Our main result is that, if $Γ$ is a finite graph which contains at least two vertices and is not a join and if $\mathcal{G}$ is a collection of finitely generated irreducible groups, then either $Γ\mathcal{G}$ is infinite dihedral or $\mathrm{Aut}(Γ\mathcal{G})$ is acylindrically hyperbolic. This theorem is new even for right-angled Artin groups and right-angled Coxeter groups. Various consequences are deduced from this statement and from the techniques used to prove it…
We explore the combination theorem for a group G splitting as a graph of relatively hyperbolic groups. Using the fine graph approach to relative hyperbolicity, we find short proofs of the relative hyperbolicity of G under certain conditions. We then provide a criterion for the relative quasiconvexity of a subgroup H depending on the relative quasiconvexity of the intersection of H with the vertex groups of G. We give an application towards local relative quasiconvexity.
Let $\mathcal{C}(S_{g,p})$ denote the curve complex of the closed orientable surface of genus $g$ with $p$ punctures. Masur-Minksy and subsequently Bowditch showed that $\mathcal{C}(S_{g,p})$ is $δ$-hyperbolic for some $δ=δ(g,p)$. In this paper, we show that there exists some $δ>0$ independent of $g,p$ such that the curve graph $\mathcal{C}_{1}(S_{g,p})$ is $δ$-hyperbolic. Furthermore, we use the main tool in the proof of this theorem to show uniform boundedness of two other quantities which a priori grow with $g$ and $p$: the curve complex distance between two vertex cycles of the same train …
We work in the density model of random groups. We prove that they satisfy an isoperimetric inequality with sharp constant $1-2d$ depending upon the density parameter $d$. This implies in particular a property generalizing the ordinary $C'$ small cancellation condition, which could be termed ``macroscopic small cancellation''. This also sharpens the evaluation of the hyperbolicity constant $δ$. As a consequence we get that the standard presentation of a random group at density $d<1/5$ satisfies the Dehn algorithm and Greendlinger's Lemma, and that it does not for $d>1/5$.
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…
In the density model of random groups, we consider presentations with any fixed number m of generators and many random relators of length l, sending l to infinity. If d is a "density" parameter measuring the rate of exponential growth of the number of relators compared to the length of relators, then many group-theoretic properties become generically true or generically false at different values of d. The signature theorem for this density model is a phase transition from triviality to hyperbolicity: for d < 1/2, random groups are a.a.s. infinite hyperbolic, while for d > 1/2, random groups ar…
In this work, we are concerned with hierarchically hyperbolic spaces and hierarchically hyperbolic groups. Our main result is a wide generalization of a combination theorem of Behrstock, Hagen, and Sisto. In particular, as a consequence, we show that any finite graph product of hierarchically hyperbolic groups is again a hierarchically hyperbolic group, thereby answering a question posed by Behrstock, Hagen, and Sisto. In order to operate in such a general setting, we establish a number of structural results for hierarchically hyperbolic spaces and hieromorphisms (that is, morphisms between su…
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…
In his 1985 paper Sullivan sketched a proof of his structural stability theorem for differentiable group actions satisfying certain expansion-hyperbolicity axioms. In this paper we relax Sullivan's axioms and introduce a notion of "meandering hyperbolicity" for group actions on geodesic metric spaces. This generalization is substantial enough to encompass actions of certain non-hyperbolic groups, such as actions of "uniform lattices" in semisimple Lie groups on flag manifolds. At the same time, our notion is sufficiently robust and we prove that meandering-hyperbolic actions are still structur…
