On Quasiconvex Subgroups of Word Hyperbolic Groups

We prove that a quasiconvex subgroup H of infinite index of a torsion free word hyperbolic group can be embedded in a larger quasiconvex subgroup which is the free product of H and an infinite cyclic group. Some properties of quasiconvex subgroups of word hyperbolic group are also discussed.     

Hyperbolic Coxeter groups of large dimension

We construct examples of Gromov hyperbolic Coxeter groups of arbitrarily large dimension. We also extend Vinbergs theorem to show that if a Gromov hyperbolic Coxeter group is a virtual Poincaré duality group of dimension n, then n 61.Coxeter groups acting on their associated complexes have been extremely useful source of examples and insight into nonpositively curved spaces over last several years. Negatively curved (or Gromov hyperbolic) Coxeter groups were much more elusive. In particular their existence in high dimensions was in doubt.In 1987 Gabor Moussong [M] conjectured that there is a universal bound on the virtual cohomological dimension of any Gromov hyperbolic Coxeter group. This question was also raised by Misha Gromov [G] (who thought that perhaps any construction of high dimensional negatively curved spaces requires nontrivial number theory in the guise of arithmetic groups in an essential way), and by Mladen Bestvina [B2].In the present paper we show that high dimensional Gromov hyperbolic Coxeter groups do exist, and we construct them by geometric or group theoretic but not arithmetic means.     

Generalizing the Croke-Kleiner construction

It is well known that every word hyperbolic group has a well-defined visual boundary. An example of C. Croke and B. Kleiner shows that the same cannot be said for CAT(0) groups. All boundaries of a CAT(0) group are, however, shape equivalent, as observed by M. Bestvina and R. Geoghegan. Bestvina has asked if they also satisfy the stronger condition of being cell-like equivalent. This article describes a construction which will produce CAT(0) groups with multiple boundaries. These groups have very complicated boundaries in high dimensions. It is our hope that their study may provide insight into Bestvina's question.     

Complex hyperbolic Kleinian groups with limit set a wild knot

We construct quasi-Fuchsian groups acting on two-dimensional complex hyperbolic space with limit set a wild knot. Also, we study the Teichmüller space T(G) of faithful, discrete, type-preserving representations of a Fuchsian group G of the first kind with parabolic elements in complex hyperbolic space. We show that T(G) is not connected, and that the Toledo invariant does not distinguish different connected components of T(G).     

Bass-Tits minimization of automata, quotients of trees and diameters

Let X be a tree and let G=Aut(X), Bass and Tits have given an algorithm to construct the ‘ultimate quotient’ of X by G starting with any quotient of X, an ‘edge-indexed’ graph. Using a sequence of integers that we compute at consecutive steps of the Bass-Tits (BT) algorithm, we give a lower bound on the diameter of the ultimate quotient of a tree by its automorphism group. For a tree X with finite quotient, this gives a lower bound on the minimum number of generators of a uniform X-lattice whose quotient graph coincides with G?X. This also gives a criterion to determine if the ultimate quotient of a tree is infinite. We construct an edge-indexed graph (A,i) for a deterministic finite state automaton and show that the BT algorithm for computing the ultimate quotient of (A,i) coincides with state minimizing algorithm for finite state automata. We obtain a lower bound on the minimum number of states of the minimized automaton. This gives a new proof that language for the word problem in a finitely generated group is regular if and only if the group is finite, and a new proof that the language of the membership problem for a subgroup is regular if and only if the subgroup has finite index.     

Surgery groups of the fundamental groups of hyperplane arrangement complements

Using a recent result of Bartels and Lück (The Borel conjecture for hyperbolic and CAT(0)-groups (preprint) \({{\tt arXiv:0901.0442v1}}\)) we deduce that the Farrell–Jones Fibered Isomorphism conjecture in \({L^{\langle -\infty \rangle}}\)-theory is true for any group which contains a finite index strongly poly-free normal subgroup, in particular, for the Artin full braid groups. As a consequence we explicitly compute the surgery groups of the Artin pure braid groups. This is obtained as a corollary to a computation of the surgery groups of a more general class of groups, namely for the fundamental group of the complement of any fiber-type hyperplane arrangement in \({{\mathbb C}^n}\).     

Writing certain commutators as products of cubes in free groups

Let Cu(γ) be the minimal number of cubes required to express an element γ of a free group F. We establish a method for showing that certain equations do not have solutions in free groups. Using it, we find Cu(γ) for certain elements of the derived subgroup of F. If is the wreath product of F by the infinite cyclic group, we also show that every element of W′ is a product of at most one commutator and three cubes in W.     

Fundamental groups of asymptotic cones

We show that for any metric space M satisfying certain natural conditions, there is a finitely generated group G, an ultrafilter ω, and an isometric embedding ι of M to the asymptotic cone Cone_ω(G) such that the induced homomorphism ι^*:π₁(M)→π₁(Cone_ω(G)) is injective. In particular, we prove that any countable group can be embedded into a fundamental group of an asymptotic cone of a finitely generated group.     

Small conjugacy classes in the automorphism groups of relatively free groups

Let F be an infinitely generated free group and let R be a fully invariant subgroup of F such that (a) R is contained in the commutator subgroup F^′ of F and (b) the quotient group F/R is residually torsion-free nilpotent. Then the automorphism group of the group F/R^′ is complete. In particular, the automorphism group of any infinitely generated free solvable group of derived length at least two is complete.This extends a result by Dyer and Formanek (1977) [7] on finitely generated groups F_n/R^′ where F_n is a free group of finite rank n at least two and R a characteristic subgroup of F_n.     

Polyhedral groups and graph amalgamation products

A polyhedral group G is defined to be the orientation-preserving subgroup of a discrete reflection group acting on hyperbolic 3-space $\text{H}$³, and having a fundamental polyhedron of finite volume. A special presentation for G is obtained from the geometry of the polyhedron. This gives G the structure of a graph amalgamation product, and which, in some cases, splits as a free product with amalgamation. The simplest examples of polyhedral groups are the so-called tetrahedral groups. Other examples are given amongst the the groups PGL(2,O_m), where O_m is the ring of algebraic integers in the quadratic imaginary field $\text{Q(}\text{-m}\text{)}$, m>0.     

A description of Baer-Suzuki type of the solvable radical of a finite group

We obtain the following characterization of the solvable radical R(G) of any finite group G: R(G) coincides with the collection of all g∈G such that for any 3 elements a₁,a₂,a₃∈G the subgroup generated by the elements , i=1,2,3, is solvable. In particular, this means that a finite group G is solvable if and only if in each conjugacy class of G every 4 elements generate a solvable subgroup. The latter result also follows from a theorem of P. Flavell on {2,3}^′-elements in the solvable radical of a finite group (which does not use the classification of finite simple groups).     

Co-local subgroups of abelian groups II

In [J. Buckner, M. Dugas, Co-local subgroups of abelian groups, in: Abelian Groups, Rings, Modules, and Homological Algebra, in: Lect. Notes Pure and Applied Math., vol. 249, Taylor and Francis/CRC Press, pp. 25-33] the notion of a co-local subgroup of an abelian group was introduced. A subgroup K of A is called co-local if the natural map is an isomorphism. At the center of attention in [J. Buckner, M. Dugas, Co-local subgroups of abelian groups, in: Abelian Groups, Rings, Modules, and Homological Algebra, in: Lect. Notes Pure and Applied Math., vol. 249, Taylor and Francis/CRC Press, pp. 25-33] were co-local subgroups of torsion-free abelian groups. In the present paper we shift our attention to co-local subgroups K of mixed, non-splitting abelian groups A with torsion subgroup t(A). We will show that any co-local subgroup K is a pure, cotorsion-free subgroup and if D/t(A) is the divisible part of A/t(A)=D/t(A)⊕H/t(A), then K∩D=0, and one may assume that K⊆H. We will construct examples to show that K need not be a co-local subgroup of H. Moreover, we will investigate connections between co-local subgroups of A and A/t(A).     

On varieties arising from the solution of the Restricted Burnside Problem

For a family of group-words w we prove that the class of all groups G satisfying the identity wⁿ≡1 and having the verbal subgroup w(G) locally nilpotent is a variety.     

Normal subgroups and elementary theories of lattice-ordered groups

We show that any lattice-ordered group (l-group) G can be l-embedded into continuously many l-groups H _i which are pairwise elementarily inequivalent both as groups and as lattices with constant e. Our groups H _i can be distinguished by group-theoretical first-order properties which are induced by lattice-theoretically nice properties of their normal subgroup lattices. Moreover, they can be taken to be 2-transitive automorphism groups A(S _i ) of infinite linearly ordered sets (S _i , ) such that each group A(S _i ) has only inner automorphisms. We also show that any countable l-group G can be l-embedded into a countable l-group H whose normal subgroup lattice is isomorphic to the lattice of all ideals of the countable dense Boolean algebra B.     

Thick metric spaces,relative hyperbolicity,and quasi-isometric rigidity

We study the geometry of non-relatively hyperbolic groups. Generalizing a result of Schwartz, any quasi-isometric image of a non-relatively hyperbolic space in a relatively hyperbolic space is contained in a bounded neighborhood of a single peripheral subgroup. This implies that a group being relatively hyperbolic with non-relatively hyperbolic peripheral subgroups is a quasi-isometry invariant. As an application, Artin groups are relatively hyperbolic if and only if freely decomposable. We also introduce a new quasi-isometry invariant of metric spaces called metrically thick, which is sufficient for a metric space to be non-hyperbolic relative to any non-trivial collection of subsets. Thick finitely generated groups include: mapping class groups of most surfaces; outer automorphism groups of most free groups; certain Artin groups; and others. Non-uniform lattices in higher rank semisimple Lie groups are thick and hence non-relatively hyperbolic, in contrast with rank one which provided the motivating examples of relatively hyperbolic groups. Mapping class groups are the first examples of non-relatively hyperbolic groups having cut points in any asymptotic cone, resolving several questions of Drutu and Sapir about the structure of relatively hyperbolic groups. Outside of group theory, Teichmüller spaces for surfaces of sufficiently large complexity are thick with respect to the Weil–Peterson metric, in contrast with Brock–Farb’s hyperbolicity result in low complexity.     

CAT(0) groups and Coxeter groups whose boundaries are scrambled sets

In this paper, we study CAT(0) groups and Coxeter groups whose boundaries are scrambled sets. Suppose that a group G acts geometrically (i.e. properly and cocompactly by isometries) on a proper CAT(0) space X. (Such a group G is called a CAT(0) group.) Then the group G acts by homeomorphisms on the boundary ∂X of X and we can define a metric d_∂X on the boundary ∂X. The boundary ∂X is called a scrambled set if, for any α,β∈∂X with α≠β, (1) lim sup{d_∂X(gα,gβ)∣g∈G}>0 and (2) lim inf{d_∂X(gα,gβ)∣g∈G}=0. We investigate when boundaries of CAT(0) groups (and Coxeter groups) are scrambled sets.     

Coxeter groups are virtually special

In this paper we prove that every finitely generated Coxeter group has a finite index subgroup that is the fundamental group of a special cube complex. Some consequences include: Every f.g. Coxeter group is virtually a subgroup of a right-angled Coxeter group. Every word-hyperbolic Coxeter group has separable quasiconvex subgroups.     

On the residual finiteness of outer automorphisms of relatively hyperbolic groups

We show that every virtually torsion-free subgroup of the outer automorphism group of a conjugacy separable relatively hyperbolic group is residually finite. As a direct consequence, we obtain that the outer automorphism group of a limit group is residually finite.