English

On Whitehead's cut vertex lemma

Group Theory 2025-01-09 v2 Geometric Topology

Abstract

One version of Whitehead's famous cut vertex lemma says that if an element of a free group is part of a free basis, then a certain graph associated to its conjugacy class that we call the star graph is either disconnected or has a cut vertex. We state and prove a version of this lemma for conjugacy classes of elements and convex-cocompact subgroups of groups acting cocompactly on trees with finitely generated edge stabilizers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2205.06071,
  title  = {On Whitehead's cut vertex lemma},
  author = {Rylee Alanza Lyman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.06071},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

8 pages, 2 figures; minor revisions according to referee comments

R2 v1 2026-06-24T11:15:27.162Z