Related papers: Stable commutator length is rational in free group…

We establish a close connection between stable commutator length in free groups and the geometry of sails (roughly, the boundary of the convex hull of the set of integer lattice points) in integral polyhedral cones. This connection allows…

Let G be a subgroup of PL(I). Then the stable commutator length of every element of [G,G] is zero.

Let G be a group acting on a tree with cyclic edge and vertex stabilizers. Then stable commutator length (scl) is rational in G. Furthermore, scl varies predictably and converges to rational limits in so-called "surgery" families. This is a…

Let $F$ be a free group. We present for arbitrary $g\in\mathbb{N}$ a LogSpace (and thus polynomial time) algorithm that determines whether a given $w\in F$ is a product of at most $g$ commutators; and more generally an algorithm that…

We show that certain classes of graphs of free groups contain surface subgroups, including groups with positive $b_2$ obtained by doubling free groups along collections of subgroups, and groups obtained by "random" ascending HNN extensions…

We give a new proof of rationality of stable commutator length (scl) of certain elements in surface groups: those represented by curves that do not fill the surface. Such elements always admit extremal surfaces for scl. These results also…

A longstanding question of Gromov asks whether every one-ended word-hyperbolic group contains a subgroup isomorphic to the fundamental group of a closed hyperbolic surface. An infinite family of word-hyperbolic groups can be obtained by…

This paper establishes the existence of a gap for the stable length spectrum on a hyperbolic manifold. If M is a hyperbolic n-manifold, for every positive e there is a positive d depending only on n and on e such that an element of pi_1(M)…

Each element of the commutator subgroup of a group can be represented as a product of commutators. The minimal number of factors in such a product is called the commutator length of the element. The commutator length of a group is defined…

Let $\Gamma$ be a finite index subgroup of the mapping class group $MCG(\Sigma)$ of a closed orientable surface $\Sigma$, possibly with punctures. We give a precise condition (in terms of the Nielsen-Thurston decomposition) when an element…

Let G be a word-hyperbolic group, obtained as a graph of free groups amalgamated along cyclic subgroups. If H_2(G;Q) is nonzero, then G contains a closed hyperbolic surface subgroup. Moreover, the unit ball of the Gromov-Thurston norm on…

We prove a general homological stability theorem for certain families of groups equipped with product maps, followed by two theorems of a new kind that give information about the last two homology groups outside the stable range. (These…

Stable subgroups and the Morse boundary are two systematic approaches to collect and study the hyperbolic aspects of finitely generated groups. In this paper we unify and generalize these strategies by viewing any geodesic metric space as a…

It is shown that there exist finitely generated infinite simple groups of infinite commutator width and infinite square width on which there exists no stably unbounded conjugation-invariant norm, and in particular stable commutator length…

For a pair $(G,N)$ of a group $G$ and its normal subgroup $N$, we consider the space of quasimorphisms and quasi-cocycles on $N$ non-extendable to $G$. To treat this space, we establish the five-term exact sequence of cohomology relative to…

A regular left-order on finitely generated group $G$ is a total, left-multiplication invariant order on $G$ whose corresponding positive cone is the image of a regular language over the generating set of the group under the evaluation map.…

We find homogeneous counting quasimorphisms that are effective at seeing chains in a free group F. As corollary, we derive that if a group G has an index-d free subgroup, then every element g in G either has stable commutator length at…

We study stable commutator length (scl) in free products via surface maps into a wedge of spaces. We prove that scl is piecewise rational linear if it vanishes on each factor of the free product, generalizing the main result in Danny…

The main result of this paper is an explicit construction of the free commutative skew brace -- that is, a skew brace whose circle group is commutative -- on an arbitrary generating set $X$. We embed this object into a set of rational…

We compute the rational stable homology of the automorphism groups of free nilpotent groups. These groups interpolate between the general linear groups over the ring of integers and the automorphism groups of free groups, and we employ…