Related papers: Constructing and Classifying Fully Irreducible Out…

Among the simplest invariants of the sporadic finite simple groups are their outer automorphism groups. For 12 of the 26 possible isomorphism types of a sporadic simple group G, the outer automorphism group Out(G) has order 2, and in the…

By a theorem of Thurston, in the subgroup of the mapping class group generated by Dehn twists around two curves that fill, every element not conjugate to a power of one of the twist is pseudo-Anosov. We prove an analogue of this theorem for…

The aim of this paper is to use the framework of incidence geometry to develop a theory that permits to model both the inner and outer automorphisms of a group G simultaneously. More precisely, to any group G, we attempt to associate an…

Let $G$ be a group and let ${\mathcal G}$ be a free factor system of $G$, namely a free splitting of $G$ as $G=G_1*\dots*G_k*F_r$. In this paper, we study the set of train track points for ${\mathcal G}$-irreducible automorphisms $\phi$…

We construct the first examples of normal subgroups of mapping class groups that are isomorphic to non-free right-angled Artin groups. Our construction also gives normal, non-free right-angled Artin subgroups of other groups, such as braid…

We establish spectral theorems for random walks on mapping class groups of connected, closed, oriented, hyperbolic surfaces, and on $\text{Out}(F_N)$. In both cases, we relate the asymptotics of the stretching factor of the…

We study those fully irreducible outer automorphisms phi of a finite rank free group F_r which are ``parageometric'', meaning that the attracting fixed point of phi in the boundary of outer space is a geometric R-tree with respect to the…

In a seminal paper, Brin demonstrates that the outerautomorphism group of Thompson group $T$ is isomorphic to the cyclic group of order two. In this article, building on characterisation of automorphisms of the Higman-Thompson groups…

Let $G$ be the mapping torus of a polynomially growing automorphism of a finitely generated free group. We determine which epimorphisms from $G$ to $\mathbb{Z}$ have finitely generated kernel, and we compute the rank of the kernel. We thus…

Among (isotopy classes of) automorphisms of handlebodies those called irreducible (or generic) are the most interesting, analogues of pseudo-Anosov automorphisms of surfaces. We consider the problem of isotoping an irreducible automorphism…

We prove several rigidity properties for random quotients of mapping class groups of surfaces, namely whose kernel is normally generated by the n-th steps of finitely many independent random walks. Firstly, we generalise a celebrated…

We prove that for every $N\ge 3$, the group $\mathrm{Out}(F_N)$ of outer automorphisms of a free group of rank $N$ is superrigid from the point of view of measure equivalence: any countable group that is measure equivalent to…

Let G be a simple, finite, connected, and undirected graph. The middle graph M(G) of G is obtained from the subdivision graph S(G) after joining pairs of subdivided vertices that lie on adjacent edges of G and the central graph C(G) of G is…

We prove that the property of a free group endomorphism being irreducible is a group invariant of the ascending HNN extension it defines. This answers a question posed by Dowdall-Kapovich-Leininger. We further prove that being irreducible…

McCarthy's Theorem for the mapping class group of a closed hyperbolic surface states that for any two mapping classes $\sigma,\tau \in \mathrm{Mod}(S)$ there is some power $N$ such that the group $\langle \sigma^N,\tau^N\rangle$ is either…

The recent paper "The further chameleon groups of Richard Thompson and Graham Higman: automorphisms via dynamics for the Higman groups $G_{n,r}$" of Bleak, Cameron, Maissel, Navas and Olukoya (BCMNO) characterises the automorphisms of the…

We prove that the isomorphism problem for finitely generated fully residually free groups is decidable. We also show that each finitely generated fully residually free group G has a decomposition that is invariant under automorphisms of G,…

This is the first in a series of four papers (with research announcement posted on this arXiv) that together develop a decomposition theory for subgroups of Out(F_n). In this paper we develop further the theory of geometric EG strata of…

We prove a tropical analogue of the theorem of Hurwitz: a leafless metric graph of genus $g \ge 2$ has at most $12$ automorphisms when $g = 2$; $2^g g!$ automorphisms when $g \ge 3$. These inequalities are optimal; for each genus, we give…

Divergence functions of a metric space estimate the length of a path connecting two points $A$, $B$ at distance $\le n$ avoiding a large enough ball around a third point $C$. We characterize groups with non-linear divergence functions as…