English

Surface groups are flexibly stable

Group Theory 2025-01-10 v3 Geometric Topology

Abstract

We show that surface groups are flexibly stable in permutations. This is the first non-trivial example of a non-amenable flexibly stable group. Our method is purely geometric and relies on an analysis of branched covers of hyperbolic surfaces. Along the way we establish a quantitative variant of the LERF property for surface groups which may be of independent interest.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.07182,
  title  = {Surface groups are flexibly stable},
  author = {Nir Lazarovich and Arie Levit and Yair Minsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.07182},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

published version, with some corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:18:06.117Z