The goal of this paper is to construct quasi-isometrically embedded subgroups of Thompson's group $F$ which are isomorphic to $\fz^n$ for all $n$. A result estimating the norm of an element of Thompson's group is found. As a corollary, Thompson's group is seen to be an example of a finitely presented group which has an infinite-dimensional asymptotic cone.
A few years ago the so-called oriented subgroup $\vec F$ of the Thompson group $F$ was introduced by V. Jones while investigating the connections between subfactors and conformal field theories. In the coding of links and knots by elements of $F$ it corresponds exactly to the oriented ones. Thanks to the work of Golan and Sapir, $\vec F$ provided the first example of a maximal subgroup of infinite index in $F$ different from the parabolic subgroups that fix a point in $(0,1)$. In this paper we investigate possible analogues of $\vec F$ in higher Thompson groups $F_k, k\geq 2$, with $F=F_2$, in…
We inspect the normal subgroup structure of the braided Thompson groups Vbr and Fbr. We prove that every proper normal subgroup of Vbr lies in the kernel of the natural quotient Vbr \onto V, and we exhibit some families of interesting such normal subgroups. For Fbr, we prove that for any normal subgroup N of Fbr, either N is contained in the kernel of Fbr \onto F, or else N contains [Fbr,Fbr]. We also compute the Bieri-Neumann-Strebel invariant Sigma^1(Fbr), which is a useful tool for understanding normal subgroups containing the commutator subgroup.
We prove that Thompson's group $F$ has a subgroup $H$ such that the conjugacy problem in $H$ is undecidable and the membership problem in $H$ is easily decidable. The subgroup $H$ of $F$ is a closed subgroup of $F$. That is, every function in $F$ which is a piecewise-$H$ function belongs to $H$. Other interesting examples of closed subgroups of $F$ include Jones' subgroups $\overrightarrow{F}_n$ and Jones' $3$-colorable subgroup $\mathcal F$. By a recent result of the first author, all maximal subgroups of $F$ of infinite index are closed. In this paper we prove that if $K\leq F$ is finitely g…
We say that a subset $X$ quasi-isometrically boundedly generates a finitely generated group $Γ$ if each element $γ$ of a finite-index subgroup of $Γ$ can be written as a product $γ= x_1 x_2 \cdots x_r$ of a bounded number of elements of $X$, such that the word length of each $x_i$ is bounded by a constant times the word length of $γ$. A. Lubotzky, S. Mozes, and M.S. Raghunathan observed in 1993 that ${\rm SL}(n,{\mathbb Z})$ is quasi-isometrically boundedly generated by the elements of its natural ${\rm SL}(2,{\mathbb Z})$ subgroups. We generalize (a slightly weakened version of) this by showi…
We construct a family of infinite simple groups that we call \emph{twisted Brin-Thompson groups}, generalizing Brin's higher-dimensional Thompson groups $sV$ ($s\in\mathbb{N}$). We use twisted Brin-Thompson groups to prove a variety of results regarding simple groups. For example, we prove that every finitely generated group embeds quasi-isometrically as a subgroup of a two-generated simple group, strengthening a result of Bridson. We also produce examples of simple groups that contain every $sV$ and hence every right-angled Artin group, including examples of type $\textrm{F}_\infty$ and a fam…
We show that the generation problem in Thompson group $F$ is decidable, i.e., there is an algorithm which decides if a finite set of elements of $F$ generates the whole $F$. The algorithm makes use of the Stallings $2$-core of subgroups of $F$, which can be defined in an analogue way to the Stallings core of subgroups of a finitely generated free group. Further study of the Stallings $2$-core of subgroups of $F$ provides a solution to another algorithmic problem in $F$. Namely, given a finitely generated subgroup $H$ of $F$, it is decidable if $H$ acts transitively on the set of finite dyadic …
In the spirit of peripheral subgroups in relatively hyperbolic groups, we exhibit a simple class of quasi-isometrically rigid subgroups in graph products of finite groups, which we call eccentric subgroups. As an application, we prove that, if two right-angled Coxeter groups $C(Γ_1)$ and $C(Γ_2)$ are quasi-isometric, then for any minsquare subgraph $Λ_1 \leq Γ_1$ there exists a minsquare subgraph $Λ_2 \leq Γ_2$ such that the right-angled Coxeter groups $C(Λ_1)$ and $C(Λ_2)$ are quasi-isometric as well. Various examples of non-quasi-isometric groups are deduced. Our arguments are based on a stu…
We will give a general criterion - the existence of an $F$-obstruction - for showing that a subgroup of $\mathrm{PL}_+ I$ does not embed into Thompson's group $F$. An immediate consequence is that Cleary's "golden ratio" group $F_τ$ does not embed into $F$. Our results also yield a new proof that Stein's groups $F_{p,q}$ do not embed into $F$, a result first established by Lodha using his theory of coherent actions. We develop the basic theory of $F$-obstructions and show that they exhibit certain rigidity phenomena of independent interest. In the course of establishing the main result of the …
This note serves as a short and reader-friendly introduction to twisted Brin-Thompson groups, which were recently constructed by Belk and the author to provide a family of simple groups with a variety of interesting properties. Most notably, twisted Brin-Thompson groups can be used to show that every finitely generated group quasi-isometrically embeds as a subgroup of a finitely generated simple group. Another important application is a concrete construction of a family of simple groups with arbitrary finiteness length. In addition to giving a concise introduction to the groups and these appli…
In this paper we consider the $T$- and $V$- versions, $T_τ$ and $V_τ$ , of the irrational slope Thompson group $F_τ$ considered in [3]. We give infinite presentations for these groups and show how they can be represented by tree-pair diagrams similar to those for $T$ and $V$. We also show that $T_τ$ and $V_τ$ have index-2 normal subgroups, unlike their original Thompson counterparts $T$ and $V$. These index-2 subgroups are shown to be simple.
We prove that under two natural probabilistic models (studied by Cleary, Elder, Rechnitzer and Taback), the probability that a random pair of elements of Thompson's group $F$ generate the entire group is positive. We also prove that for any $k$-generated subgroup $H$ of $F$ which contains a "natural" copy of $F$, the probability of a random $(k+2)$-generated subgroup of $F$ coinciding with $H$ is positive.
We obtain a characterisation of confined subgroups of Thompson's group $F$. As a result, we deduce that orbital graph of a point under action of $F$ has uniformly subexponential growth if and only if this point is fixed by the commutator subgroup. This allows us to prove non-embeddability of $F$ into wobbling groups of graphs with uniformly subexponential growth.
We abstract the notion of an A/QI triple from a number of examples in geometric group theory. Such a triple (G,X,H) consists of a group G acting on a Gromov hyperbolic space X, acylindrically along a finitely generated subgroup H which is quasi-isometrically embedded by the action. Examples include strongly quasi-convex subgroups of relatively hyperbolic groups, convex cocompact subgroups of mapping class groups, many known convex cocompact subgroups of Out(Fn), and groups generated by powers of independent loxodromic WPD elements of a group acting on a Gromov hyperbolic space. We initiate the…
The main result of this article is that any braided (resp. annular, planar) diagram group $D$ splits as a short exact sequence $1 \to R \to D \to S \to 1$ where $R$ is a subgroup of some right-angled Artin group and $S$ a subgroup of Thompson's group $V$ (resp. $T$, $F$). As an application, we show that several braided diagram groups embeds into Thompson's group $V$, including Higman's groups $V_{n,r}$, groups of quasi-automorphisms $QV_{n,r,p}$, and generalised Houghton's groups $H_{n,p}$.
A remarkable result of Thompson states that a finite group is soluble if and only if its two-generated subgroups are soluble. This result has been generalized in numerous ways, and it is in the core of a wide area of research in the theory of groups, aiming for global properties of groups from local properties of two-generated (or more generally, $n$-generated) subgroups. We contribute an extension of Thompson's theorem from the perspective of factorized groups. More precisely, we study finite groups $G = AB$ with subgroups $A,\ B$ such that $\langle a, b\rangle$ is soluble for all $a \in A$ a…
We show that the density of elements in Thompson's groups T and V which have north-south dynamics acting on the circle is positive with respect to a stratification in terms of size. We show that the fraction of element pairs which generate a free subgroup of rank two is positive in both groups with respect to a stratification based on diagram size, which shows that the associated subgroup spectra of $T$ and $V$ contain free groups.
Recall that a group $G$ is said to be $\frac{3}{2}$-generated if every non-trivial element of $G$ belongs to a generating pair of $G$. Thompson's group $V$ was proved to be $\frac{3}{2}$-generated by Donoven and Harper in 2019. It was the first example of an infinite finitely presented non-cyclic $\frac{3}{2}$-generated group. Recently, Bleak, Harper and Skipper proved that Thompson's group $T$ is also $\frac{3}{2}$-generated. In this paper, we prove that Thompson's group $F$ is "almost" $\frac{3}{2}$-generated in the sense that every element of $F$ whose image in the abelianization forms part…
