English

A train track directed random walk on $Out(F_r)$

Group Theory 2015-06-02 v4 Geometric Topology

Abstract

Several known results, by Rivin, Calegari-Maher and Sisto, show that an element ϕnOut(Fr)\phi_n\in Out(F_r), obtained after nn steps of a simple random walk on Out(Fr)Out(F_r), is fully irreducible with probability tending to 1 as nn\to\infty. In this paper we construct a natural "train-track directed" random walk W\mathcal W on Out(Fr)Out(F_r) (where r3r\ge 3). We show that, for the element ϕnOut(Fr)\phi_n\in Out(F_r), obtained after nn steps of this random walk, with asymptotically positive probability the element ϕn\phi_n has the following properties: ϕn\phi_n is an ageometric fully irreducible, which admits a train-track representative with no periodic Nielsen paths and exactly one nondegenerate illegal turn, that ϕn\phi_n has "rotationless index" 32r\frac{3}{2}-r (so that the geometric index of the attracting tree TϕnT_{\phi_n} of ϕn\phi_n is 2r32r-3), has index list {32r}\{\frac{3}{2}-r\} and the ideal Whitehead graph being the complete graph on 2r12r-1 vertices, and that the axis bundle of ϕn\phi_n in the Outer space CVrCV_r consists of a single axis.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1409.8044,
  title  = {A train track directed random walk on $Out(F_r)$},
  author = {Ilya Kapovich and Catherine Pfaff},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.8044},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Various small updates, incorporating the referee's comments; to appear in the International Journal of Algebra and Computation

R2 v1 2026-06-22T06:08:05.670Z