Related papers: Towers and the first-order theory of hyperbolic gr…

In a remarkable series of papers, Zlil Sela classified the first-order theories of free groups and torsion-free hyperbolic groups using geometric structures he called towers. It was later proved by Chlo\'e Perin that if $H$ is an…

We consider embeddings in a torsion-free hyperbolic group which are elementary in the sense of first-order logic. We give a description of these embeddings in terms of Sela's hyperbolic towers. We deduce as a corollary that subgroups…

In 2006 Z. Sela and independently O. Kharlampovich and A. Myasnikov gave a solution to the Tarski problems by showing that two non-abelian free groups have the same elementary theory. Subsequently Z. Sela generalized the techniques used in…

We show that in general for a given group the structure of a maximal hyperbolic tower over a free group is not canonical: We construct examples of groups having hyperbolic tower structures over free subgroups which have arbitrarily large…

Let G be a torsion free hyperbolic group. We prove that the elementary theory of G is decidable and admits an effective quantifier elimination to boolean combination of AE-formulas. The existence of such quantifier elimination was…

We develop methods to control the first-order theory of groups arising as certain direct limits of torsion-free hyperbolic groups, answering several questions in the literature. We construct simple torsion-free Tarski monsters $\Gamma$…

In a series of papers starting in [Sel01] and culminating in [Sel07], Z. Sela proved that free groups, and more generally torsion-free hyperbolic groups, have a stable first-order theory. The question of the stability of the free product of…

We give a complete characterization of torsion-free hyperbolic groups which are homogeneous in the sense of first-order logic, in terms of the JSJ decompositions of their free factors.

We use hyperbolic towers to answer some model theoretic questions around the generic type in the theory of free groups. We show that all the finitely generated models of this theory realize the generic type $p_0$, but that there is a…

We provide a solution to the isomorphism problem for torsion-free relatively hyperbolic groups with abelian parabolics. As special cases we recover solutions to the isomorphism problem for: (i) torsion-free hyperbolic groups (Sela); and…

Let $\mathcal G$ denote the space of finitely generated marked groups. We give equivalent characterizations of closed subspaces $\mathcal S\subseteq \mathcal G$ satisfying the following zero-one law: for any sentence $\sigma$ in the…

We prove that if a countable group is elementarily equivalent to a non-abelian free group and all of its abelian subgroups are cyclic, then the group is a union of a chain of regular NTQ groups (i.e., hyperbolic towers).

Sela introduced limit groups in his work on the Tarski problem, and showed that each limit group has a cyclic hierarchy. In this paper, a class of relatively hyperbolic groups, equipped with a hierarchy similar to the one for limit groups,…

We generalise Merzlyakov's theorem about the first-order theory of non-abelian free groups to all acylindrically hyperbolic groups. As a corollary, we deduce that if $G$ is an acylindrically hyperbolic group and $E(G)$ denotes the unique…

We study to what extent torsion-free (Gromov)-hyperbolic groups are elementarily equivalent to their finite index subgroups. In particular, we prove that a hyperbolic limit group either is a free product of cyclic groups and surface groups,…

This note provides a brief guide to the current state of the literature on Tarski's problems with emphasis on features that distinguish the approach based on combinatorial and algorithmic group theory from the topological approach to…

We introduce the notion of an EZ-structure on a group. Delta-hyperbolic groups and CAT(0)-groups have EZ-structures. We show torsion-free groups having an EZ-structure automatically have an action by homeomorphisms on a closed…

In this article we prove that the set of torsion-free groups acting by isometries on a hyperbolic metric space whose entropy is bounded above and with a compact quotient is finite. The number of such groups can be estimated in terms of the…

A group $G$ is said to be a {\it CSA}-group if all maximal abelian subgroups of $G$ are malnormal. The class of CSA groups is of interest because it contains torsion-free hyperbolic groups, groups acting freely on $\Lambda$-trees and groups…

We show that any nonabelian free group $F$ of finite rank is homogeneous; that is for any tuples $\bar a$, $\bar b \in F^n$, having the same complete $n$-type, there exists an automorphism of $F$ which sends $\bar a$ to $\bar b$. We further…