English

The Metric Completion of Outer Space

Group Theory 2018-09-12 v6

Abstract

We develop the theory of a metric completion of an asymmetric metric space. We characterize the points on the boundary of Outer Space that are in the metric completion of Outer Space with the Lipschitz metric. We prove that the simplicial completion, the subset of the completion consisting of simplicial tree actions, is homeomorphic to the free splitting complex. We use this to give a new proof of a theorem by Francaviglia and Martino that the isometry group of Outer Space is homeomorphic to Out(Fn)\text{Out}(F_n) for n3n \geq 3 and equal to PSL(2,Z)\text{PSL}(2,\mathbb{Z}) for n=2n=2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1202.6392,
  title  = {The Metric Completion of Outer Space},
  author = {Yael Algom-Kfir},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.6392},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Added references for quasi-metric spaces. Thoroughly revised version. Section 1 is completely new. Fixed some mistakes in other sections

R2 v1 2026-06-21T20:26:37.252Z