Typical elements in free groups are in different doubly-twisted conjugacy classes (Q975222): Difference between revisions

Given two homomorphisms \(\varphi, \psi: G\to H\) between groups \(G\) and \(H\), two elements \(u\) and \(v\) in \(H\) are defined to be doubly-twisted conjugate if there is an element \(g\) in \(G\) such that \(u = \varphi(g) v \psi(g^{-1})\). Thus, the target group \(H\) is partitioned into a disjoint union of double-twisted conjugacy classes. In the paper under review, the author considers the case that \(G\) and \(H\) are finitely generated free groups. The main result is a sufficient condition which ensures that two elements of \(H\) are in different doubly-twisted conjugacy classes. It is also pointed out that this condition is easily checkable. The definition of ``double-twisted conjugacy'' is motivated by coincidence classes on the level of fundamental groups. This work should be helpful to compute coincidence Nielsen numbers of maps between surfaces with boundaries, generalizing \textit{J. Wagner}'s algorithm [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 351, No.~1, 41--62 (1999; Zbl 0910.55001)] for computing the Nielsen numbers of selfmaps on surfaces with boundaries.