Free-by-cyclic groups are conjugacy separable
Abstract
We show that all finitely generated free-by-cyclic groups are conjugacy separable: if a finitely generated group surjects onto with free kernel, then for every pair of non-conjugate elements , there exists a finite quotient such that is not conjugate to . This resolves Question 19.41 of the Kourovka Notebook. We apply this to prove that the outer automorphism group of a finitely generated free-by-cyclic group is residually finite. Along the way we prove that if the monodromy of a {finitely generated free}-by-cyclic group is polynomially growing, then the double cosets of a cyclic subgroup are separable. Our approach combines vertex fillings in graph-of-groups decompositions, and Dehn fillings in relatively hyperbolic groups, according to the different geometric regimes in free-by-cyclic groups.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.22346,
title = {Free-by-cyclic groups are conjugacy separable},
author = {François Dahmani and Sam Hughes and Monika Kudlinska and Nicholas Touikan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.22346},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
v2: this is a significant improvement of our original result (v1) which only deals with the case of polynomially growing monodromies