We obtain an upper bound for relative Dehn functions of amalgamated products and HNN--extensions with respect to certain collections of subgroups. Our main results generalize the combination theorems for relatively hyperbolic groups proved by Dahmani.
It is shown that the compressed word problem for an HNN-extension with base group H and finite associated subgroups is polynomial time Turing-reducible to the compressed word problem for H. An analogous result for amalgamated free products is shown as well.
We calculate the rank gradient and p-gradient of free products, free products with amalgamation over an amenable subgroup, and HNN extensions with an amenable associated subgroup. The notion of cost is used to compute the rank gradient of amalgamated free products and HNN extensions. For the p-gradient the Kurosh subgroup theorems for amalgamated free products and HNN extensions will be used.
Gromov asked whether an asymptotic cone of a finitely generated group was always simply connected or had uncountable fundamental group. We prove that Gromov's dichotomy holds for asympotic cones with cut points, as well as, HNN extensions and amalgamated products where the associated subgroups are nicely embedded. We also show a slightly weaker dichotomy for multiple HNN extensions of free groups.
The authors announce the following theorem. Theorem 1. If $G=A*_H B$ is an amalgamated product where $A$ and $B$ are finitely presented and semistable at infinity, and $H$ is finitely generated, then $G$ is semistable at infinity. If $G=A*_H$ is an HNN-extension where $A$ is finitely presented and semistable at infinity, and $H$ is finitely generated, then $G$ is semistable at infinity.
It is shown that the knapsack problem, which was introduced by Myasnikov et al. for arbitrary finitely generated groups, can be solved in NP for graph groups. This result even holds if the group elements are represented in a compressed form by SLPs, which generalizes the classical NP-completeness result of the integer knapsack problem. We also prove general transfer results: NP-membership of the knapsack problem is passed on to finite extensions, HNN-extensions over finite associated subgroups, and amalgamated products with finite identified subgroups.
We establish sufficient conditions for the C$^*$-simplicity of two classes of groups. The first class is that of groups acting on trees, such as amalgamated free products, HNN-extensions, and their normal subgroups; for example normal subgroups of Baumslag-Solitar groups. The second class is that of fundamental groups of compact 3-manifolds, related to the first class by their Kneser-Milnor and JSJ-decompositions. Much of our analysis deals with conditions on an action of a group $Γ$ on a tree $T$ which imply the following three properties: abundance of hyperbolic elements, better called stron…
Garside groups are a natural lattice-theoretic generalisation of the braid groups and spherical type Artin--Tits groups. Here we show that the class of Garside groups is closed under some free products with cyclic amalgamated subgroups. We deduce that every tree product of infinite cyclic groups is a Garside group. Moreover, we study those cyclic HNN extensions of Garside groups that are Garside groups as well. Using a theorem of Pietrowski, we conclude this paper by stating that a non-cyclic one-relator group is Garside if and only if its centre is nontrivial.
Stackability for finitely presented groups consists of a dynamical system that iteratively moves paths into a maximal tree in the Cayley graph. Combining with formal language theoretic restrictions yields auto- or algorithmic stackability, which implies solvability of the word problem. In this paper we give two new characterizations of the stackable property for groups, and use these to show that every HNN extension of a stackable group is stackable. We apply this to exhibit a wide range of Dehn functions that are admitted by stackable and autostackable groups, as well as an example of a stack…
We study the second bounded cohomology of an amalgamated free product of groups, and an HNN extension of a group. As an application, we have a group with infinitely many ends has infinite dimensional second bounded cohomology.
In this paper we introduce a new family of icc groups $Γ$ which satisfy the following product rigidity phenomenon, discovered in [DHI16] (see also [dSP17]): all tensor product decompositions of the II$_1$ factor $L(Γ)$ arise only from the canonical direct product decompositions of the underlying group $Γ$. Our groups are assembled from certain HNN-extensions and amalgamated free products and include many remarkable groups studied throughout mathematics such as graph product groups, poly-amalgam groups, Burger-Mozes groups, Higman group, various integral two-dimensional Cremona groups, etc. As …
In 1971 J. Stallings introduced a generalisation of amalgamated products of groups -- called a pregroup, which is a particular kind of a partial group. He defined the universal group U(P) of a pregroup P to be a universal object (in the sense of category theory) extending the partial operations on P to group operations on U(P). This turns out to be a versatile and convenient generalisation of classical group constructions: HNN-extensions and amalgamated products. In this respect the following general question arises. Which properties of pregroups, or relations between pregroups, carry over to …
In various occasions the conjugacy problem in finitely generated amalgamated products and HNN extensions can be decided efficiently for elements which cannot be conjugated into the base groups. This observation asks for a bound on how many such elements there are. Such bounds can be derived using the theory of amenable graphs: In this work we examine Schreier graphs of amalgamated products and HNN extensions. For an amalgamated product $G = H *_A K $ with $[H:A] \geq [K:A] \geq 2$, the Schreier graph with respect to $H$ or $K$ turns out to be non-amenable if and only if $[H:A] \geq 3$. Moreove…
It is an old and challenging topic to investigate for which discrete groups G the full group C*-algebra C*(G) is residually finite-dimensional (RFD). In particular not much is known about how the RFD property behaves under fundamental constructions, such as amalgamated free products and HNN-extensions. In [CS19] it was proved that central amalgamated free products of virtually abelian groups are RFD. In this paper we prove that this holds much beyond this case. Our method is based on showing a certain approximation property for characters induced from central subgroups. In particular it allows…
The k-dimensional Dehn (or isoperimetric) function of a group bounds the volume of efficient ball-fillings of k-spheres mapped into k-connected spaces on which the group acts properly and cocompactly; the bound is given as a function of the volume of the sphere. We advance significantly the observed range of behavior for such functions. First, to each non-negative integer matrix P and positive rational number r, we associate a finite, aspherical 2-complex X_{r,P} and calculate the Dehn function of its fundamental group G_{r,P} in terms of r and the Perron-Frobenius eigenvalue of P. The range o…