Telescopic actions (Q1934648)

The authors call a co-compact properly discontinuous isometric group action \(\Gamma\) on a metric space \(X\) ``telescopic'', if for any finitely presented group \(G\), there exists a finite index subgroup \(\Gamma' \subset \Gamma\) such that \(G\) is isomorphic to \(\pi_1 (X/\Gamma')\). They construct examples of telescopic actions on a \(2\)-dimensional \(CAT[-1]\) space and on the hyperbolic spaces \(\mathbb{H}^3\) and \(\mathbb{H}^4\). The first example is obtained from a space \(Y\) that is obtained from a wedge of two circles by attaching four disks (\(Y\) is homeomorphic to \(\mathbb{R}P^2\) together with two disks attached along two simple closed (essential) curves) and equipping \(Y\) with an intrinsic metric such that each disk contains three singular points modeled on the singularity of \(\mathbb{H}^2 /\mathbb{Z}_2\). An \textit{orbi-cover} \(Y'\) of \(Y\) is a cover of \(Y\) with at most double branching at the \(12\) singular points. The authors prove that for any given finitely presented group \(G\), there is a finite orbi-cover \(f:Y' \rightarrow Y\) such that \(G\) is isomorphic to \(\pi_1 (Y')\). The space \(Y\) admits a unique cover \(X\rightarrow Y\) of a \(CAT[-1]\)-space \(X\) that has double branching at each singular point. The corresponding action \(\Gamma\) by deck transformations is a telescoping action. In the second example the authors prove that the Coxeter group \(\Gamma_{12}\) generated by reflection in faces of a right-angled hyperbolic dodecahedron is a telescopic action on \(\mathbb{H}^3\). Furthermore, the only singularities are cones over \(\mathbb{R}P^2\), which implies as a corollary a result of Aitchinson, which states that every finitely presented group \(G\) is isomorphic to the fundamental group of \(M/\mathbb {Z}_2\), for some closed oriented \(3\)-manifold \(M\) with \(\mathbb {Z}_2\) action having only isolated fixed points. Finally the authors show that the action of the Coxeter group \(\Gamma_{120}\) on \(\mathbb{H}^4\) is telescopic and use this to obtain a short proof of a theorem of Taubes, which states that every finitely presented group \(G\) is isomorphic to the fundamental group of a smooth compact complex \(3\)-manifold.