English

Regular Neighbourhoods and Canonical Decompositions for Groups

Group Theory 2007-05-23 v2 Geometric Topology

Abstract

We find canonical decompositions for finitely presented groups which specialize to the classical JSJ-decomposition when restricted to the fundamental groups of Haken manifolds. The decompositions that we obtain are invariant under automorphisms of the group. A crucial new ingredient is the concept of a regular neighbourhood for a finite family of almost invariant subsets of a group. An almost invariant set is an analogue of an immersion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0110210,
  title  = {Regular Neighbourhoods and Canonical Decompositions for Groups},
  author = {Peter Scott and Gadde Swarup},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0110210},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

First version: 124 pages. This is a preliminary version. Second version: 155 pages. Added new sections, more details and more examples. Reorganised parts of paper, and improved exposition

R2 v1 2026-07-22T16:41:04.317Z