Diagram rigidity for geometric amalgamations of free groups

In this paper, we show that a class of 2-dimensional locally CAT(-1) spaces is topologically rigid: isomorphism of the fundamental groups is equivalent to the spaces being homeomorphic. An immediate application of this result is a diagram rigidity theorem for certain amalgamations of free groups. The direct limits of two such amalgamations are isomorphic if and only if there is an isomorphism between the respective diagrams.     

Reflection groups of geodesic spaces and Coxeter groups

H.S.M. Coxeter showed that a group Γ is a finite reflection group of an Euclidean space if and only if Γ is a finite Coxeter group. In this paper, we define reflections of geodesic spaces in general, and we prove that Γ is a cocompact discrete reflection group of some geodesic space if and only if Γ is a Coxeter group.     

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.     

Uniform universal covers of uniform spaces

We develop a generalized covering space theory for a class of uniform spaces called coverable spaces. Coverable spaces include all geodesic metric spaces, connected and locally pathwise connected compact topological spaces, in particular Peano continua, as well as more pathological spaces like the topologist's sine curve. The uniform universal cover of a coverable space is a kind of generalized cover with universal and lifting properties in the category of uniform spaces and uniformly continuous mappings. Associated with the uniform universal cover is a functorial uniform space invariant called the deck group, which is related to the classical fundamental group by a natural homomorphism. We obtain some specific results for one-dimensional spaces.     

Dimension zero at all scales

We consider the notion of dimension in four categories: the category of (unbounded) separable metric spaces and (metrically proper) Lipschitz maps, and the category of (unbounded) separable metric spaces and (metrically proper) uniform maps. A unified treatment is given to the large scale dimension and the small scale dimension. We show that in all categories a space has dimension zero if and only if it is equivalent to an ultrametric space. Also, 0-dimensional spaces are characterized by means of retractions to subspaces. There is a universal zero-dimensional space in all categories. In the Lipschitz Category spaces of dimension zero are characterized by means of extensions of maps to the unit 0-sphere. Any countable group of asymptotic dimension zero is coarsely equivalent to a direct sum of cyclic groups. We construct uncountably many examples of coarsely inequivalent ultrametric spaces.     

Boundaries of right-angled Coxeter groups with manifold nerves

All abstract reflection groups act geometrically on non-positively curved geodesic spaces. Their natural space at infinity, consisting of (bifurcating) infinite geodesic rays emanating from a fixed base point, is called a boundary of the group.We will present a condition on right-angled Coxeter groups under which they have topologically homogeneous boundaries. The condition is that they have a nerve which is a connected closed orientable PL manifold.In the event that the group is generated by the reflections of one of Davis’ exotic open contractible n-manifolds (n?4), the group will have a boundary which is a homogeneous cohomology manifold. This group boundary can then be used to equivariantly Z-compactify the Davis manifold.If the compactified manifold is doubled along the group boundary, one obtains a sphere if n?5. The system of reflections extends naturally to this sphere and can be augmented by a reflection whose fixed point set is the group boundary. It will be shown that the fixed point set of each extended original reflection on the thus formed sphere is a tame codimension-one sphere.     

Orientation-reversing free actions on handlebodies

We examine free orientation-reversing group actions on orientable handlebodies, and free actions on nonorientable handlebodies. A classification theorem is obtained, giving the equivalence classes and weak equivalence classes of free actions in terms of algebraic invariants that involve Nielsen equivalence. This is applied to describe the sets of free actions in various cases, including a complete classification for many (and conjecturally all) cases above the minimum genus. For abelian groups, the free actions are classified for all genera.     

Diagram groups and directed 2-complexes: Homotopy and homology

We show that diagram groups can be viewed as fundamental groups of spaces of positive paths on directed 2-complexes (these spaces of paths turn out to be classifying spaces). Thus diagram groups are analogs of second homotopy groups, although diagram groups are as a rule non-Abelian. Part of the paper is a review of the previous results from this point of view. In particular, we show that the so-called rigidity of the R. Thompson's group F and some other groups is similar to the flat torus theorem. We find several finitely presented diagram groups (even of type F_∞) each of which contains all countable diagram groups. We show how to compute minimal presentations and homology groups of a large class of diagram groups. We show that the Poincaré series of these groups are rational functions. We prove that all integer homology groups of all diagram groups are free Abelian.     

Groupoid extensions of mapping class representations for bordered surfaces

The mapping class group of a surface with one boundary component admits numerous interesting representations including a representation as a group of automorphisms of a free group and as a group of symplectic transformations. Insofar as the mapping class group can be identified with the fundamental group of Riemann's moduli space, it is furthermore identified with a subgroup of the fundamental path groupoid upon choosing a basepoint. A combinatorial model for this, the mapping class groupoid, arises from the invariant cell decomposition of Teichmüller space, whose fundamental path groupoid is called the Ptolemy groupoid. It is natural to try to extend representations of the mapping class group to the mapping class groupoid, i.e., to construct a homomorphism from the mapping class groupoid to the same target that extends the given representations arising from various choices of basepoint.Among others, we extend both aforementioned representations to the groupoid level in this sense, where the symplectic representation is lifted both rationally and integrally. The techniques of proof include several algorithms involving fatgraphs and chord diagrams. The former extension is given by explicit formulae depending upon six essential cases, and the kernel and image of the groupoid representation are computed. Furthermore, this provides groupoid extensions of any representation of the mapping class group that factors through its action on the fundamental group of the surface including, for instance, the Magnus representation and representations on the moduli spaces of flat connections.     

The structure of 3-manifolds with two-generated fundamental group

We provide a structure theorem for 3-manifolds with 2-generated fundamental group and non-trivial JSJ-decomposition. We further give a number of applications.     

A refinement of the simple connectivity at infinity for groups

We give another proof for a result of Brick ([2]) stating that the simple connectivity at infinity is a geometric property of finitely presented groups. This allows us to define the rate of vanishing of $\pi^{\infty}_{1}$ for those groups which are simply connected at infinity. Further we show that this rate is linear for cocompact lattices in nilpotent and semi-simple Lie groups, and in particular for fundamental groups of geometric 3-manifolds. Received: 12 December 2001     

Combinatorial conditions that imply word-hyperbolicity for 3-manifolds

Thurston conjectured that a closed triangulated 3-manifold in which every edge has degree 5 or 6, and no two edges of degree 5 lie in a common 2-cell, has word-hyperbolic fundamental group. We establish Thurston's conjecture by proving that such a manifold admits a piecewise Euclidean metric of non-positive curvature and the universal cover contains no isometrically embedded flat planes. The proof involves a mixture of computer computation and techniques from small cancellation theory.     

When does the Haver property imply selective screenability?

We point out that in metric spaces Haver's property is not equivalent to the property introduced by Addis and Gresham. We prove that they are equal when the space has the Hurewicz property. We prove several results about the preservation of Haver's property in products. We show that if a separable metric space has the Haver property, and the nth power has the Hurewicz property, then the nth power has the Addis-Gresham property. R. Pol showed earlier that this is not the case when the Hurewicz property is replaced by the weaker Menger property. We introduce new classes of weakly infinite dimensional spaces.     

On fundamental groups of quotient spaces

In classical covering space theory, a covering map induces an injection of fundamental groups. This paper reveals a dual property for certain quotient maps having connected fibers, with applications to orbit spaces of vector fields and leaf spaces in general.     

Local connectedness and extension of uniformly continuous functions

A metric space X is straight if for each finite cover of X by closed sets, and for each real valued function f on X, if f is uniformly continuous on each set of the cover, then f is uniformly continuous on the whole of X. The straight spaces have been studied in [A. Berarducci, D. Dikranjan, J. Pelant, An additivity theorem for uniformly continuous functions, Topology and its Applications 146-147 (2005) 339-352], which contains characterization of the straight spaces within the class of the locally connected spaces (they are the uniformly locally connected ones) and the class of the totally disconnected spaces (they coincide with the totally disconnected Atsuji spaces). We show that the completion of a straight space is straight and we characterize the dense straight subspaces of a straight space. In order to clarify further the relation between straightness and the level of local connectedness of the space we introduce two more intermediate properties between straightness and uniform local connectedness and we give various examples to distinguish them. One of these properties coincides with straightness for complete spaces and provides in this way a useful characterization of complete straight spaces in terms of the behaviour of the quasi-components of the space.     

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.     

The Cannon–Thurston map for punctured-surface groups

Let Γ be the fundamental group of a compact surface group with non-empty boundary. We suppose that Γ admits a properly discontinuous strictly type preserving action on hyperbolic 3-space such that there is a positive lower bound on the translation lengths of loxodromic elements. We describe the Cannon–Thurston map in this case. In particular, we show that there is a continuous equivariant map of the circle to the boundary of hyperbolic 3-space, where the action on the circle is obtained by taking any finite-area complete hyperbolic structure on the surface, and lifting to the boundary of hyperbolic 2-space. We deduce that the limit set is locally connected, hence a dentrite in the singly degenerate case. Moreover, we show that the Cannon–Thurston map can be described topologically as the quotient of the circle by the equivalence relations arising from the ends of the quotient 3-manifold. For closed surface bundles over the circle, this was obtained by Cannon and Thurston. Some generalisations and variations have been obtained by Minsky, Mitra, Alperin, Dicks, Porti, McMullen and Cannon. We deduce that a finitely generated kleinian group with a positive lower bound on the translation lengths of loxodromics has a locally connected limit set assuming it is connected.     

On nilpotent ideals in the cohomology ring of a finite group

In this paper we find upper bounds for the nilpotency degree of some ideals in the cohomology ring of a finite group by studying fixed point free actions of the group on suitable spaces. The ideals we study are the kernels of restriction maps to certain collections of proper subgroups. We recover the Quillen-Venkov lemma and the Quillen F-injectivity theorem as corollaries, and discuss some generalizations and further applications.We then consider the essential cohomology conjecture, and show that it is related to group actions on connected graphs. We discuss an obstruction for constructing a fixed point free action of a group on a connected graph with zero “k-invariant” and study the class related to this obstruction. It turns out that this class is a “universal essential class” for the group and controls many questions about the groups essential cohomology and transfers from proper subgroups.     

The weak isovariant Borsuk-Ulam theorem for compact Lie groups

In this paper we shall deal with a weak version of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem for G-isovariant maps, which we call the weak isovariant Borsuk-Ulam theorem. One of the results is that the weak isovariant Borsuk-Ulam theorem in linear G-spheres holds for an arbitrary compact Lie group G. On the contrary the weak isovariant Borsuk-Ulam theorem in semilinear G-(homology) spheres holds if and only if G is solvable. Received: 2 April 2002