Related papers: Polygonal words in free groups
Let $G$ be a hyperbolic group that splits as a graph of free groups with cyclic edge groups. We prove that, unless $G$ is isomorphic to a free product of free and surface groups, every finite abelian group $M$ appears as a direct summand in…
By strengthening known results about primitivity-blocking words in free groups, we prove that for any nontrivial element w of a free group of finite rank, there are words that cannot be subwords of any cyclically reduced automorphic image…
Every word $w$ in a free group naturally induces a probability measure on every compact group $G$. For example, if $w=\left[x,y\right]$ is the commutator word, a random element sampled by the $w$-measure is given by the commutator…
In response to a question raised by Belolipetsky and the first author, we prove that for every finite group $G$ there are infinitely many isomorphism classes of compact complex hyperbolic $2$-manifolds with automorphism group isomorphic to…
We prove that the compressed word problem in a group that is hyperbolic relative to a collection of free abelian subgroups is solvable in polynomial time.
We find polynomial-time solutions to the word problem for free-by-cyclic groups, the word problem for automorphism groups of free groups, and the membership problem for the handlebody subgroup of the mapping class group. All of these…
Consider a one-ended word-hyperbolic group. If it is the fundamental group of a graph of free groups with cyclic edge groups then either it is the fundamental group of a surface or it contains a finitely generated one-ended subgroup of…
A word in a free group is called ``potentially positive'' if it is automorphic to an element which is written with only positive exponents. We will develop automata to analyze properties of potentially positive words. We will use these to…
We prove that ascending HNN extensions of free groups are word-hyperbolic if and only if they have no Baumslag-Solitar subgroups. This extends the theorem of Brinkmann that free-by-cyclic groups are word-hyperbolic if and only if they have…
We find strictly ascending HNN extensions of finite rank free groups possessing a presentation 2-complex which is a non positively curved square complex. On showing these groups are word hyperbolic, we have by results of Wise and Agol that…
Word maps in a group, an analogue of polynomials in groups, are defined by substitution of formal words. Lubotzky gave a characterization of the images of word maps in finite simple groups, and a consequence of his characterization is the…
A well known question of Gromov asks whether every one-ended hyperbolic group $\Gamma$ has a surface subgroup. We give a positive answer when $\Gamma$ is the fundamental group of a graph of free groups with cyclic edge groups. As a result,…
Let $\Phi:F\rightarrow F$ be an automorphism of the finite-rank free group $F$. Suppose that $G=F\rtimes_\Phi\mathbb Z$ is word-hyperbolic. Then $G$ acts freely and cocompactly on a CAT(0) cube complex.
In this article, we study word equations in free semigroups and the conjecture that the existence of infinitely many solutions entails the existence of solutions with arbitrarily large exponent of periodicity. We examine this question in…
Group cohomology of polynomial growth is defined for any finitely generated discrete group, using cochains that have polynomial growth with respect to the word length function. We give a geometric condition that guarantees that it agrees…
We initiate the study of torsion-free algebraically hyperbolic groups; these groups generalise torsion-free hyperbolic groups and are intricately related to groups with no Baumslag--Solitar subgroups. Indeed, for groups of cohomological…
We prove that a word hyperbolic group which admits a $P_{2q+1}$-Anosov representation into $\mathsf{PGL}(4q+2, \mathbb{R})$ contains a finite-index subgroup which is either free or a surface group. As a consequence, we give an affirmative…
We construct words with small image in a given finite alternating or unimodular group. This shows that word width in these groups is unbounded in general.
In a number of recent works, it has been established that many virtually free groups, almost all fundamental groups of surfaces and all groups which are nontrivial free products of groups satisfying a non-trivial law are algebraically…
Surface groups are known to be the Poincar\'e Duality groups of dimension two since the work of Eckmann, Linnell and M\"uller. We prove a prosolvable analogue of this result that allows us to show that surface groups are profinitely (and…