We show that if $G$ is a non-elementary torsion-free word hyperbolic group then there exists another word hyperbolic group $G^*$, such that $G$ is a subgroup of $G^*$ but $G$ is not quasiconvex in $G^*$.
We provide a new and elegant approach to relative quasiconvexity for relatively hyperbolic groups in the context of Bowditch's approach to relative hyperbolicity using cocompact actions on fine hyperbolic graphs. Our approach to quasiconvexity generalizes the other definitions in the literature that apply only for countable relatively hyperbolic groups. We also provide an elementary and self-contained proof that relatively quasiconvex subgroups are relatively hyperbolic.
Let G be a group which is hyperbolic relative to a collection of subgroups A, and it is also hyperbolic relative to a collection of subgroups B. Suppose that the collection A contains B. We characterize, for subgroups of G, when quasicovexity relative to A implies quasiconvexity relative to B. We also show that quasiconvexity relative to B implies quasiconvexity relative to A. Some applications are discussed.
We discuss the notion of the universal relatively hyperbolic structure on a group which is used in order to characterize relatively hyperbolic structures on the group. We also study relations between relatively hyperbolic structures on a group and relative quasiconvexity for subgroups of the group.
We prove that for any finitely generated relatively hyperbolic group G and any symmetric endomorphism f of G with relatively quasiconvex image, Fixf is relatively quasiconvex subgroup of G.
We consider two families of subgroups of a group. Each subgroup which belongs to one family is contained in some subgroup which belongs to the other family. We then discuss relations of relative hyperbolicity for the group with respect to the two families, respectively. If the group is supposed to be hyperbolic relative to the two families, respectively, then we consider relations of relative quasiconvexity for a subgroup of the group with respect to the two families, respectively.
We obtain a criterion for quasiconvexity of a subgroup of an amalgamated free product of two word hyperbolic groups along a virtually cyclic subgroup. The result provides a method of constructing new word hyperbolic group in class (Q), that is such that all their finitely generated subgroups are quasiconvex. It is known that free groups, hyperbolic surface groups and most 3-dimensional Kleinian groups have property (Q). We also give some applications of our results to one-relator groups and exponential groups.
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.
$H$ is called a $G$-subgroup of a hyperbolic group $G$ if for any finite subset $M\subset G$ there exists a homomorphism from $G$ onto a non-elementary hyperbolic group $G_1$ that is surjective on $H$ and injective on $M$. In his paper in 1993 A. Ol'shanskii gave a description of all $G$-subgroups in any given non-elementary hyperbolic group $G$. Here we show that for the same class of $G$-subgroups the finiteness assumption on $M$ (under certain natural conditions) can be replaced by an assumption of quasiconvexity.
We study different notions of quasiconvexity for a subgroup $H$ of a relatively hyperbolic group $G.$ The first result establishes equivalent conditions for $H$ to be relatively quasiconvex. As a corollary we obtain that the relative quasiconvexity is equivalent to the dynamical quasiconvexity. This answers to a question posed by D. Osin \cite{Os06}. In the second part of the paper we prove that a subgroup $H$ of a finitely generated relatively hyperbolic group $G$ acts cocompactly outside its limit set if and only if it is (absolutely) quasiconvex and every its infinite intersection with a pa…
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…
In this paper, we prove a limit set intersection theorem in relatively hyperbolic groups. Our approach is based on a study of dynamical quasiconvexity of relatively quasiconvex subgroups. Using dynamical quasiconvexity, many well-known results on limit sets of geometrically finite Kleinian groups are derived in general convergence groups. We also establish dynamical quasiconvexity of undistorted subgroups in finitely generated groups with nontrivial Floyd boundary.
We develop a theory of \emph{strongly quasiconvex subgroups} of an arbitrary finitely generated group. Strong quasiconvexity generalizes quasiconvexity in hyperbolic groups and is preserved under quasi-isometry. We show that strongly quasiconvex subgroups are also more reflexive of the ambient groups geometry than the stable subgroups defined by Durham-Taylor, while still having many analogous properties to those of quasiconvex subgroups of hyperbolic groups. We characterize strongly quasiconvex subgroups in terms of the lower relative divergence of ambient groups with respect to them. We also…
We lay the foundations for the study of relatively quasiconvex subgroups of relatively hyperbolic groups. These foundations require that we first work out a coherent theory of countable relatively hyperbolic groups (not necessarily finitely generated). We prove the equivalence of Gromov, Osin, and Bowditch's definitions of relative hyperbolicity for countable groups. We then give several equivalent definitions of relatively quasiconvex subgroups in terms of various natural geometries on a relatively hyperbolic group. We show that each relatively quasiconvex subgroup is itself relatively hyperb…
The paper consists of two parts. In the first one we show that a relatively hyperbolic group $G$ splits as a star graph of groups whose central vertex group is finitely generated and the other vertex groups are maximal parabolic subgroups. As a corollary we obtain that every group which admits 3-discontinuous and 2-cocompact action by homeomorphisms on a compactum is finitely generated with respect to a system of parabolic subgroups. The second part essentially uses the methods of topological entourages developed in the first part. Using also Floyd metrics we obtain finer properties of finitel…
We introduce and study the notion of relative rigidity for pairs $(X,\JJ)$ where 1) $X$ is a hyperbolic metric space and $\JJ$ a collection of quasiconvex sets 2) $X$ is a relatively hyperbolic group and $\JJ$ the collection of parabolics 3) $X$ is a higher rank symmetric space and $\JJ$ an equivariant collection of maximal flats Relative rigidity can roughly be described as upgrading a uniformly proper map between two such $\JJ$'s to a quasi-isometry between the corresponding $X$'s. A related notion is that of a $C$-complex which is the adaptation of a Tits complex to this context. We prove t…
We define a new condition on relatively hyperbolic Dehn filling which allows us to control the behavior of a relatively quasiconvex subgroups which need not be full. As an application, in combination with a recent result of Cooper and Futer, we provide a new proof of the virtual fibering of non-compact finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds, a result first proved by Wise. Additionally, we explain how the results of [2, Appendix A] can be generalized to the relative setting to control the relative height of relatively quasiconvex subgroups under appropriate Dehn fillings.
Let $1 \to K \longrightarrow G \stackrelπ\longrightarrow Q$ be an exact sequence of hyperbolic groups. Let $Q_1 < Q$ be a quasiconvex subgroup and let $G_1=π^{-1}(Q_1)$. Under relatively mild conditions (e.g. if $K$ is a closed surface group or a free group and $Q$ is convex cocompact), we show that infinite index quasiconvex subgroups of $G_1$ are quasiconvex in $G$. Related results are proven for metric bundles, developable complexes of groups, and graphs of groups.
In this paper, we introduce and characterize a class of parabolically extended structures for relatively hyperbolic groups. A characterization of relative quasiconvexity with respect to parabolically extended structures is obtained using dynamical methods. Some applications are discussed. The class of groups acting geometrically finitely on Floyd boundaries turns out to be easily understood. However, we also show that Dunwoody's inaccessible group does not act geometrically finitely on its Floyd boundary.
We introduce a number of tools for finding and studying \emph{hierarchically hyperbolic spaces (HHS)}, a rich class of spaces including mapping class groups of surfaces, Teichmüller space with either the Teichmüller or Weil-Petersson metrics, right-angled Artin groups, and the universal cover of any compact special cube complex. We begin by introducing a streamlined set of axioms defining an HHS. We prove that all HHSs satisfy a Masur-Minsky-style distance formula, thereby obtaining a new proof of the distance formula in the mapping class group without relying on the Masur-Minsky hierarchy mac…
An interesting question about quasiconvexity in a hyperbolic group concerns finding classes of quasiconvex subsets that are closed under finite intersections. A known example is the class of all quasiconvex subgroups. However, not much is yet learned about the structure of arbitrary quasiconvex subsets. In this work we study the properties of products of quasiconvex subgroups; we show that such sets are quasiconvex, their finite intersections have a similar algebraic representation and, thus, are quasiconvex too.
We introduce a strong notion of quasiconvexity in finitely generated groups, which we call stability. Stability agrees with quasiconvexity in hyperbolic groups and is preserved under quasi-isometry for finitely generated groups. We show that the stable subgroups of mapping class groups are precisely the convex cocompact subgroups. This generalizes a well-known result of Behrstock and is related to questions asked by Farb-Mosher and Farb.
A Kleinian group $Γ< \mathrm{Isom}(\mathbb H^3)$ is called convex cocompact if any orbit of $Γ$ in $\mathbb H^3$ is quasiconvex or, equivalently, $Γ$ acts cocompactly on the convex hull of its limit set in $\partial \mathbb H^3$. Subgroup stability is a strong quasiconvexity condition in finitely generated groups which is intrinsic to the geometry of the ambient group and generalizes the classical quasiconvexity condition above. Importantly, it coincides with quasiconvexity in hyperbolic groups and convex cocompactness in mapping class groups. Using the Morse boundary, we develop an equivalent…
In this paper, we study strongly quasiconvex subgroups in a finitely generated $3$--manifold group $π_1(M)$. We prove that if $M$ is a compact, orientable $3$--manifold that does not have a summand supporting the Sol geometry in its sphere-disc decomposition then a finitely generated subgroup $H \le π_1(M)$ has finite height if and only if $H$ is strongly quasiconvex. On the other hand, if $M$ has a summand supporting the Sol geometry in its sphere-disc decomposition then $π_1(M)$ contains finitely generated, finite height subgroups which are not strongly quasiconvex. We also characterize stro…
For a free group $\mathbb{F}$ of finite rank such that $\text{rank}(\mathbb{F})\geq 3$, we prove that the set of weak limits of a conjugacy class in $\mathbb{F}$ under iterates of some hyperbolic $ϕ\in\mathsf{Out(\mathbb{F})}$ is equal to the collection of generic leaves and singular lines of $ϕ$. As an application we describe the ending lamination set for a hyperbolic extension of $\mathbb{F}$ by a hyperbolic subgroup of $\mathsf{Out(\mathbb{F})}$ in a new way and use it to prove results about Cannon-Thurston maps for such extensions. We also use it to derive conditions for quasiconvexity of …
We prove that stability -- a strong quasiconvexity property -- pulls back under proper actions on proper metric spaces. This result has several applications, including that convex cocompact subgroups of both mapping class groups and outer automorphism groups of free groups are stable. We also characterize stability in relatively hyperbolic groups whose parabolic subgroups have linear divergence.
In this paper, we prove that all finitely generated malnormal subgroups of one-ended right-angled Coxeter groups are strongly quasiconvex and they are in particular quasiconvex when the ambient groups are hyperbolic. The key idea is to prove all infinite proper malnormal subgroups of one-ended right-angled Coxeter groups are join-free and then prove the strong quasiconvexity and the virtual freeness of these subgroups. We also study the subgroup divergence of join-free subgroups in right-angled Coxeter groups and compare them with the analogous subgroups in right-angled Artin groups. We charac…
We generalize the small cancellation theory over hyperbolic groups developed by Olshanskii to the case of relatively hyperbolic groups. This allows us to construct infinite finitely generated groups with exactly $n$ conjugacy classes for every $n\ge 2$. In particular, we give the affirmative answer to the well--known question of the existence of a finitely generated group $G$ other than $\mathbb Z/2\mathbb Z$ such that all nontrivial elements of $G$ are conjugate.
We prove that all Gromov hyperbolic groups embed into the asynchronous rational group defined by Grigorchuk, Nekrashevych and Sushchanskiĭ. The proof involves assigning a system of binary addresses to points in the Gromov boundary of $G$, and proving that elements of $G$ act on these addresses by transducers. These addresses derive from a certain self-similar tree of subsets of $G$, whose boundary is naturally homeomorphic to the horofunction boundary of $G$.
For any torsion-free hyperbolic group $Γ$ and any group $G$ that is fully residually $Γ$, we construct algorithmically a finite collection of homomorphisms from $G$ to groups obtained from $Γ$ by extensions of centralizers, at least one of which is injective. When $G$ is residually $Γ$, this gives a effective embedding of $G$ into a direct product of such groups. We also give an algorithmic construction of a diagram encoding the set of homomorphisms from a given finitely presented group to $Γ$.
Bowditch characterized relative hyperbolicity in terms of group actions on fine hyperbolic graphs with finitely many edge orbits and finite edge stabilizers. In this paper, we define generalized fine actions on hyperbolic graphs, in which the peripheral subgroups are allowed to stabilize finite sub-graphs rather than stabilizing a point. Generalized fine actions are useful for studying groups that act relatively geometrically on a CAT(0) cube complex, which were recently defined by the first two authors. Specifically, we show that a group acting relatively geometrically on a CAT(0) cube comple…
In the last years, there has been a large amount of research on embeddability properties of finitely generated hyperbolic groups. In this paper, we elaborate on the more general class of locally compact hyperbolic groups. We compute the equivariant $L_p$-compression in a number of locally compact examples, such as the groups $SO(n,1)$: by proving that the equivariant $L_p$-compression of a locally compact compactly generated group is minimal for $p=2$, we calculate all equivariant $L_p$-compressions of $SO(n,1)$. Next, we show that although there are locally compact, non-discrete hyperbolic gr…
Hierarchically hyperbolic spaces (HHSs) are a large class of spaces that provide a unified framework for studying the mapping class group, right-angled Artin and Coxeter groups, and many 3--manifold groups. We investigate strongly quasiconvex subsets in this class and characterize them in terms of their contracting properties, relative divergence, the coarse median structure, and the hierarchical structure itself. Along the way, we obtain new tools to study HHSs, including two new equivalent definitions of hierarchical quasiconvexity and a version of the bounded geodesic image property for str…
We consider embeddings in a torsion-free hyperbolic group which are elementary in the sense of first-order logic. We give a description of these embeddings in terms of Sela's hyperbolic towers. We deduce as a corollary that subgroups elementarily embedded in finitely generated free groups are free factors.
We prove that for all $p>1$, every relatively hyperbolic group has $\ell^p$ compression exponent equal to the minimum of the exponents of its maximal parabolic subgroups. Moreover, this embedding can be explicitly described in terms of given embeddings of the maximal parabolic subgroups.
We consider two manifestations of non-positive curvature: acylindrical actions on hyperbolic spaces and quasigeodesic stability. We study these properties for the class of hierarchically hyperbolic groups, which is a general framework for studying many important families of groups, including mapping class groups, right-angled Coxeter and Artin groups, most 3-manifold groups, and many others. A group that admits an acylindrical action on a hyperbolic space may admit many such actions on different hyperbolic spaces, so it is natural to search for a "best" one. The set of all cobounded acylindric…
We prove that a finitely generated, right-angled, hyperbolic Coxeter group can be quasiisometrically embedded into the product of n binary trees, where n is the chromatic number of the group. As application we obtain certain strongly aperiodic tilings of the Davis complex of these groups.
We introduce an obstruction to the existence of a coarse embedding of a given group or space into a hyperbolic group, or more generally into a hyperbolic graph of bounded degree. The condition we consider is "admitting exponentially many fat bigons", and it is preserved by a coarse embedding between graphs with bounded degree. Groups with exponential growth and linear divergence (such as direct products of two groups one of which has exponential growth, solvable groups that are not virtually nilpotent, and uniform higher-rank lattices) have this property and hyperbolic graphs do not, so the fo…
In a remarkable series of papers, Zlil Sela classified the first-order theories of free groups and torsion-free hyperbolic groups using geometric structures he called towers. It was later proved by Chloé Perin that if $H$ is an elementarily embedded subgroup (or elementary submodel) of a torsion-free hyperbolic group $G$, then $G$ is a tower over $H$. We prove a generalization of Perin's result to toral relatively hyperbolic groups using JSJ and shortening techniques.
For any finitely generated, non-elementary, torsion-free group $G$ that is hyperbolic relative to $\mathbb P$, we show that there exists a group $G^*$ containing $G$ such that $G^*$ is hyperbolic relative to $\mathbb P$ and $G$ is not relatively quasiconvex in $G^*$. This generalizes a result of I. Kapovich for hyperbolic groups. We also prove that any torsion-free group $G$ that is non-elementary and hyperbolic relative to $\mathbb P$, contains a rank 2 free subgroup $F$ such that the group generated by "randomly" chosen elements $r_1,...,r_m$ in $F$ is aparabolic, malnormal in $G$ and quasic…
Let G be an acylindrically hyperbolic group. We consider a random subgroup H in G, generated by a finite collection of independent random walks. We show that, with asymptotic probability one, such a random subgroup H of G is a free group, and the semidirect product of H acting on E(G) is hyperbolically embedded in G, where E(G) is the unique maximal finite normal subgroup of G.
We prove that any arithmetic hyperbolic $n$-manifold of simplest type can either be geodesically embedded into an arithmetic hyperbolic $(n+1)$-manifold or its universal $\mathrm{mod}~2$ Abelian cover can.
We show that a relatively hyperbolic group quasi-isometrically embeds in a product of finitely many trees if the peripheral subgroups do, and we provide an estimate on the minimal number of trees needed. Applying our result to the case of 3-manifolds, we show that fundamental groups of closed 3-manifolds have linearly controlled asymptotic dimension at most 8. To complement this result, we observe that fundamental groups of Haken 3-manifolds with non-empty boundary have asymptotic dimension 2.
We study isometric actions of tree automorphism groups on the infinite-dimensional hyperbolic spaces. On the one hand, we exhibit a general one-parameter family of such representations and analyse the corresponding equivariant embeddings of the trees, showing that they are convex-cocompact and asymptotically isometric. On the other hand, focusing on the case of sufficiently transitive groups of automorphisms of locally finite trees, we classify completely all irreducible representations by isometries of hyperbolic spaces. It turns out that in this case our one-parameter family exhausts all non…
We identify a large class of hyperbolic groups whose von Neumann algebras are not strongly 1-bounded: Sela's hyperbolic towers over $F_2$ subgroups. We also show that any intermediate subalgebra of the diagonal embedding of $L(F_2)$ into its ultrapower doesn't have Property (T).
Geometric and dynamic properties of embeddings of SL(2,Z) into the Cremona group are studied. Infinitely many non-conjugate embeddings which preserve the type (i.e. which send elliptic, parabolic and hyperbolic elements onto elements of the same type) are provided. The existence of infinitely many non-conjugate elliptic, parabolic and hyperbolic embeddings is also shown. In particular, a group G of automorphisms of a smooth surface S obtained by blowing-up 10 points of the complex projective plane is given. The group G is isomorphic to SL(2,Z), preserves an elliptic curve and all its elements …
If one tries to embed a metric space uniformly in Hilbert space, how close to quasi-isometric could the embedding be? We answer this question for finite dimensional CAT(0) cube complexes and for hyperbolic groups. In particular, we show that the Hilbert space compression of any hyperbolic group is 1.
We construct a one-to-one continuous map from the Morse boundary of a hierarchically hyperbolic group to its Martin boundary. This construction is based on deviation inequalities generalizing Ancona's work on hyperbolic groups. This provides a possibly new metrizable topology on the Morse boundary of such groups. We also prove that the Morse boundary has measure 0 with respect to the harmonic measure unless the group is hyperbolic.