English

Centralisers of Dehn twist automorphisms of free groups

Group Theory 2015-05-27 v3 Geometric Topology

Abstract

We refine Cohen and Lustig's description of centralisers of Dehn twists of free groups. We show that the centraliser of a Dehn twist of a free group has a subgroup of finite index that has a finite classifying space. We describe an algorithm to find a presentation of the centraliser. We use this algorithm to give an explicit presentation for the centraliser of a Nielsen automorphism in Aut(F_n). This gives restrictions to actions of Aut(F_n) on CAT(0) spaces.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1206.5728,
  title  = {Centralisers of Dehn twist automorphisms of free groups},
  author = {Moritz Rodenhausen and Richard D. Wade},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.5728},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

33 pages, revised section 5, added section 6.5. Other minor revisions