arXiv research

Question 2.6 of Bestvina's Questions in Geometric Group Theory asks whether every pair of boundaries of a given CAT(0) group G is cell-like equivalent. The question was posed by Bestvina shortly after the discovery, by Croke and Kleiner, of a CAT(0) group that admits multiple boundaries. Previously, it had been observe…

Torelli group's second homology is finite for large genus surfaces.

It is well known that every word hyperbolic group has a well-defined visual boundary. An example of C. Croke and B. Kleiner shows that the same cannot be said for CAT(0) groups. All boundaries of a CAT(0) group are, however, shape equivalent, as observed by M. Bestvina and R. Geoghegan. Bestvina has asked if they also …

Study on cohomological dimension of surface terms, answering Farb's question.

We prove that for the harmonic measure associated to a random walk on Out$(F_r)$ satisfying some mild conditions, a typical tree in the boundary of Outer space is trivalent and nongeometric. This answers a question of M. Bestvina.

We prove a combination theorem for trees of (strongly) relatively hyperbolic spaces and finite graphs of (strongly) relatively hyperbolic groups. This gives a geometric extension of Bestvina and Feighn's Combination Theorem for hyperbolic groups and answers a question of Swarup. We also prove a converse to the main Com…

We classify Dehn functions of Bestvina-Brady groups.

M. Bestvina has shown that for any given torsion-free CAT(0) group G, all of its boundaries are shape equivalent. He then posed the question of whether they satisfy the stronger condition of being cell-like equivalent. In this article we prove that the answer is "Yes" in the situation where the group in question splits…

In 2000, Croke and Kleiner showed that a CAT(0) group G can admit more than one boundary. This contrasted with the situation for word hyperbolic groups, where it was well-known that each such group admitted a unique boundary---in a very stong sense. Prior to Croke and Kleiner's discovery, it had been observed by Geoghe…

For a based manifold (M,*), the question of whether the surjection Diff(M,*) \rightarrow π_0 Diff(M,*) admits a section is an example of a Nielsen realization problem. This question is related to a question about flat connections on M-bundles and is meaningful for M of any dimension. In dimension 2, Bestvina-Church-Sou…

Uniformly finite Cannon--Thurston fibers in most hyperbolic settings.

The action dimension of a group G is the minimal dimension of a contractible manifold that G acts on properly discontinuously. We show that if G acts properly and cocompactly on a thick Euclidean building, then the action dimension is bounded below by twice the dimension of the building. We also compute the action dime…

Triangle Artin groups split as graphs of free groups under specific conditions.

We show that the fundamental groups of any two closed irreducible non-geometric graph-manifolds are quasi-isometric. This answers a question of Kapovich and Leeb. We also classify the quasi-isometry types of fundamental groups of graph-manifolds with boundary in terms of certain finite two-colored graphs. A corollary i…

Bestvina-Brady groups arise as kernels of length homomorphisms from right-angled Artin groups G_\G to the integers. Under some connectivity assumptions on the flag complex Δ_\G, we compute several algebraic invariants of such a group N_\G, directly from the underlying graph \G. As an application, we give examples of Be…

Given a right-angled Artin group A, the associated Bestvina-Brady group is defined to be the kernel of the homomorphism A \to \mathbb{Z} that maps each generator in the standard presentation of A to a fixed generator of \mathbb{Z}. We prove that the Dehn function of an arbitrary finitely presented Bestvina-Brady group …

Reduces conjecture to tree-based Artin groups.

Bestvina and Handel have found an effective algorithm that determines whether a given homeomorphism of an orientable, possibly punctured surface is pseudo-Anosov. We present a software package in Java that realizes this algorithm for surfaces with one puncture. Moreover, the package allows the user to define homeomorph…

This article gives solutions to the exercises in Bestvina and Feighn's paper on Sela's work on limit groups. We prove that all constructible limit groups are limit groups and give an account of the shortening argument of Rips and Sela.

A Garside group is a group admitting a finite lattice generating set D. Using techniques developed by Bestvina for Artin groups of finite type, we construct K(π,1)s for Garside groups. This construction shows that the (co)homology of any Garside group G is easily computed given the lattice D, and there is a simple suff…

A $\mathcal{Z}$-structure on a group $G$ was introduced by Bestvina in order to extend the notion of a group boundary beyond the realm of CAT(0) and hyperbolic groups. A refinement of this notion, introduced by Farrell and Lafont, includes a $G$-equivariance requirement, and is known as an $\mathcal{EZ}$-structure. The…

Motivated by the usefulness of boundaries in the study of hyperbolic and CAT(0) groups, Bestvina introduced a general approach to group boundaries via the notion of a Z-structure on a group G. Several variations on Z-structures have been studied and existence results have been obtained for some very specific classes of…

Graphs with specific spanning trees yield RAAGs, with applications to BBGs.

Study investigates lattices fibring over the circle, focusing on BNSR invariants.

Let K be a 2-dimensional finite flag complex. We study the CAT(0) dimension of the `Bestvina-Brady group', or `Artin kernel', Gamma_K. We show that Gamma_K has CAT(0) dimension 3 unless K admits a piecewise Euclidean metric of non-positive curvature. We give an example to show that this implication cannot be reversed. …

Bestvina and Feighn showed that a morphism S --> T between two simplicial trees that commutes with the action of a group G can be written as a product of elementary folding operations. Here a more general morphism between simplicial trees is considered, which allow different groups to act on S and T. It is shown that t…

In this paper we explore relationships between divergence and thick groups, and with the same techniques we estimate lengths of shortest conjugators. We produce examples, for every positive integer n, of CAT(0) groups which are thick of order n and with polynomial divergence of order n+1, both these phenomena are new. …

Let G be a closed transitive subgroup of Homeo(S^1) which contains a non-constant continuous path f: [0,1] --> G. We show that up to conjugation G is one of the following groups: SO(2,R), PSL(2,R), PSL_k(2,R), Homeo_k(S^1), Homeo(S^1). This verifies the classification suggested by Ghys [Enseign. Math. 47 (2001) 329-407…

The paper proves hyperbolic groups are semistable and their boundaries are linearly connected.

We give a graphical theory of integral indefinite binary Hamiltonian forms $f$ analogous to the one by Conway for binary quadratic forms and the one of Bestvina-Savin for binary Hermitian forms. Given a maximal order $\mathcal O$ in a definite quaternion algebra over $\mathbb Q$, we define the waterworld of $f$, analog…

We formalize an equivariant version of Bestvina-Brady discrete Morse theory, and apply it to Vietoris-Rips complexes in order to exhibit finite universal spaces for proper actions for all asymptotically CAT(0) groups.

In this paper, we refine the notion of Z-boundaries of groups introduced by Bestvina and further developed by Dranishnikov. We then show that the standard assumption of finite-dimensionality can be omitted as the result follows from the other assumptions.

Generalizes Bestvina's $\mathcal{Z}$-boundaries to coarse $\mathcal{Z}$-boundaries.

We prove that if $T$ is an $\mathbb R$-tree with a minimal free isometric action of $F_N$, then the $Out(F_N)$-stabilizer of the projective class $[T]$ is virtually cyclic. For the special case where $T=T_+(φ)$ is the forward limit tree of an atoroidal iwip element $φ\in Out(F_N)$ this is a consequence of the results o…

We offer a short and elementary proof that, for a Z-set A in a finite-dimensional ANR Y, dimA<dimY. This result is relevant to the study of group boundaries. The original proof by Bestvina and Mess relied on cohomological dimension theory.

A contractible simplicial complex is constructed that parametrizes different ways of representing a fixed one-dimensional homology class in a closed orientable surface by isotopy classes of systems of disjoint oriented simple closed curves. This is a variant on an earlier construction of Bestvina-Bux-Margalit.

We develop a theory of Nobeling manifolds similar to the theory of Hilbert space manifolds. We show that it reflects the theory of Menger manifolds developed by M. Bestvina and is its counterpart in the realm of complete spaces. In particular, the Nobeling manifold characterization conjecture is proven.

We ask if any finite type generalized braid group is a subgroup of some classical Artin braid group. We define a natural map from a given finite type generalized braid group to a classical braid group and ask if this map is an injective homomorphism. We prove that this map is a homomorphism for the braid groups of type…

We study very small trees from the point of view of reducing systems of free factors, which are analogues of reducing systems of curves for a surface lamination; a non-trivial, proper free factor $F \leq \FN$ reduces $T$ if and only if $F$ acts on some subtree of $T$ with dense orbits. We characterize those trees, call…

We give a description of the boundary of a complex of free factors that is analogous to E. Klarreich's description of the boundary of a curve complex. The argument uses the geometry of folding paths developed by Bestvina and Feighn as well as structural results about very small trees developed by Coulbois, Hilion, Lust…

This is an addendum to arXiv: 0810.5376. We show, using our methods and an auxiliary result of Bestvina-Bromberg-Fujiwara, that a finitely generated group with infinitely many pairwise non-conjugate homomorphisms to a mapping class group virtually acts non-trivially on an $\R$-tree, and, if it is finitely presented, it…

We inspect Vietoris-Rips complexes $VR_t(X)$ of certain metric spaces $X$ using a new generalization of Bestvina-Brady discrete Morse theory. Our main result is a pair of metric criteria on $X$, called the Morse Criterion and Link Criterion, that allow us to deduce information about the homotopy types of certain $VR_t(…

Let $F$ be a finitely generated free group. By using Bestvina-Handel theory, as well as some further improvements, the eigengroups of a given automorphism of $F$ (and its fixed subgroup among them) are globally analyzed and described. In particular, an explicit description of all subgroups of $F$ which occur as the fix…

Reduces conjecture for Artin groups to simpler cases.

The thesis shows how automorphisms of hyperbolic groups can be represented by train track maps.

We simplify the construction of projection complexes due to Bestvina-Bromberg-Fujiwara. To do so, we introduce a sharper version of the Behrstock inequality, and show that it can always be enforced. Furthermore, we use the new setup to prove acylindricity results for the action on the projection complexes. We also trea…

We show that strongly contracting geodesics in Outer space project to parameterized quasigeodesics in the free factor complex. This result provides a converse to a theorem of Bestvina--Feighn, and is used to give conditions for when a subgroup of $\mathrm{Out}(\mathbb{F})$ has a quasi-isometric orbit map into the free …

The boundary of hyperbolic groups is locally simply connected.