English

Stable Commutator Length in Amalgamated Free Products

Group Theory 2014-05-13 v3 Geometric Topology

Abstract

We show that stable commutator length is rational on free products of free Abelian groups amalgamated over Zk\mathbb{Z}^k, a class of groups containing the fundamental groups of all torus knot complements. We consider a geometric model for these groups and parameterize all surfaces with specified boundary mapping to this space. Using this work we provide a topological algorithm to compute stable commutator length in these groups. Further, we use the methods developed to show that in free products of cyclic groups the stable commutator length of a fixed varies quasirationally in the orders of the free factors.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1310.2254,
  title  = {Stable Commutator Length in Amalgamated Free Products},
  author = {Timothy Susse},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1310.2254},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

28 pages, 5 figures. Corrected typographical errors, changed exposition, added new results on quasirationality

R2 v1 2026-06-22T01:42:50.134Z