We prove a compactness theorem for automorphisms of free groups. Namely, we show that the set of automorphisms keeping bounded the length of the uniform current is compact (up to conjugation.) This implies that the spectrum of the length of the images of the uniform current is discrete, answering to a conjecture of I. Kapovich.
We study the minimally displaced set of irreducible automorphisms of a free group. Our main result is the co-compactness of the minimally displaced set of an irreducible automorphism with exponential growth $ϕ$, under the action of the centraliser $C(ϕ)$. As a corollary, we get that the same holds for the action of $<ϕ>$ on $Min(ϕ)$. Finally, we prove that the minimally displaced set of an irreducible automorphism of growth rate one is consisted of a single point.
We prove a purely topological characterization of the Moufang property for disconnected compact polygons in terms of convergence groups. As a consequence, we recover the fact that a locally finite thick affine building of rank 3 is a Bruhat-Tits building if and only if its automorphism group is strongly transitive. We also study automorphism groups of general compact polygons without any homogeneity assumption. A compactness criterion for sets of automorphisms is established, generalizing the theorem by Burns and Spatzier that the full automorphism group, endowed with the compact-open topology…
We study the Lipschitz metric on Outer Space and prove that fully irreducible elements of Out(F_n) act by hyperbolic isometries with axes which are strongly contracting. As a corollary, we prove that the axes of fully irreducible automorphisms in the Cayley graph of Out(F_n) are stable, meaning that a quasi-geodesic with endpoints on the axis stays within a bounded distance from the axis.
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.
Given a tree $T$ and a group $\Ga$ of automorphisms of $T$, we study the markovian properties of the geodesic flow on the quotient by $\Ga$ of the space of geodesics of $T$. For instance, when $T$ is the Bruhat-Tits tree of a semi-simple connected algebraic group $\underline{G}$ of rank one over a non archimedian local field $\wh K$, and $\Ga$ is a (possibly non uniform) lattice in $\underline{G}(\wh K)$, we prove that the type preserving geodesic flow is Bernoulli with finite entropy. Under some mild assumptions, we prove that if the quotient geodesic flow is mixing for a probability Patterso…
In 1981 Masur proved the existence of a dense geodesic in the moduli space for a Teichmüller space. We prove an analogue theorem for reduced Outer Space endowed with the Lipschitz metric. We also prove two results possibly of independent interest: we show Brun's unordered algorithm weakly converges and from this prove that the set of Perron-Frobenius eigenvectors of positive integer $m \times m$ matrices is dense in the positive cone $\mathbb{R}^m_+$ (these matrices will in fact be the transition matrices of positive automorphisms). We give a proof in the appendix that not every point in the b…
Scissors automorphism groups II: Solomon-Tits theorems
University of Toronto Scarborough(多伦多大学士嘉堡分校);University of Aberdeen(阿伯丁大学);Binghamton University(宾汉姆顿大学);Purdue University(普渡大学);Universität Münster(明斯特大学)
We study left-invariant distances on Lie groups for which there exists a one-parameter family of homothetic automorphisms. The main examples are Carnot groups, in particular the Heisenberg group with the standard dilations. We are interested in criteria implying that, locally and away from the diagonal, the distance is Euclidean Lipschitz and, consequently, that the metric spheres are boundaries of Lipschitz domains in the Euclidean sense. In the first part of the paper, we consider geodesic distances. In this case, we actually prove the regularity of the distance in the more general context o…
Using geodesic currents, we provide a theoretical justification for some of the experimental results regarding the behavior of Whitehead's algorithm on non-minimal inputs, that were obtained by Haralick, Miasnikov and Myasnikov via pattern recognition methods. In particular we prove that the images of "random" elements of a free group $F$ under the automorphisms of $F$ form "clusters" that share similar normalized Whitehead graphs and similar behavior with respect to Whitehead's algorithm.
We prove that all atoroidal automorphisms of $Out(F_N)$ act on the space of projectivized geodesic currents with generalized north-south dynamics. As an application, we produce new examples of non virtually cyclic, free and purely atoroidal subgroups of $Out(F_N)$ such that the corresponding free group extension is hyperbolic. Moreover, these subgroups are not necessarily convex cocompact.
A compactness theorem for twisted-unitary elements of integral group rings, with a certified route to the theta-unitary Case A at window B(4) of the Promislow group
When two free factors A and B of a free group F_n are in "general position" we define the projection of B to the splitting complex (alternatively, the complex of free factors) of A. We show that the projections satisfy properties analogous to subsurface projections introduced by Masur and Minsky. We use the subfactor projections to construct an action of Out(F_n) on a finite product of hyperbolic spaces where every automorphism with exponential growth acts with positive translation length. We also prove a version of the Bounded geodesic image theorem. In the appendix, we give a sketch of the p…
We establish spectral theorems for random walks on mapping class groups of connected, closed, oriented, hyperbolic surfaces, and on $\text{Out}(F_N)$. In both cases, we relate the asymptotics of the stretching factor of the diffeomorphism/automorphism obtained at time $n$ of the random walk to the Lyapunov exponent of the walk, which gives the typical growth rate of the length of a curve -- or of a conjugacy class in $F_N$ -- under a random product of diffeomorphisms/automorphisms. In the mapping class group case, we first observe that the drift of the random walk in the curve complex is also …
Non-positively curved spaces admitting a cocompact isometric action of an amenable group are investigated. A classification is established under the assumption that there is no global fixed point at infinity under the full isometry group. The visual boundary is then a spherical building. When the ambient space is geodesically complete, it must be a product of flats, symmetric spaces, biregular trees and Bruhat--Tits buildings. We provide moreover a sufficient condition for a spherical building arising as the visual boundary of a proper CAT(0) space to be Moufang, and deduce that an irreducible…