Acylindrical actions on trees and the Farrell-Jones conjecture (Q2319845)

The Isomorphism Farrell-Jones Conjecture predicts that the \(K\)- and \(L\)-theory of any group can be computed from its virtually cyclic subgroups. It is the most important conjecture in Geometric Topology at this time because it implies all the known rigidity conjectures and also provides inductive methods for calculating the obstruction groups. The paper under review is on the Farrell-Jones Conjecture for groups \(G\) that act acyndrically on a simplicial tree i.e., the action fixes geodecic segments of certain length. The main result of the paper is that the group \(G\) satisfies the Farrell-Jones Conjecture in \(K\)-theory with respect to the family \(\mathcal{F} = \mathcal {F}_T \cup \mathcal {F}_{\partial}\) of subgroups of \(G\). Here, \(\mathcal {F}_T\) denotes the subconjugates of vertex stabilizers of the action and \({F}_{\partial}\) the subgroups that fix a pair of boundary points pointwise. If we extend the family to \(\mathcal{F}_2\) which consists of subgroups that contain a subgroup of index \(\le 2\) in \(\mathcal{F}\), then \(G\) satisfies the \(L\)-theory Farrell-Jones Conjecture relative \(\mathcal{F}_2\). In particular, it implies that if the acylindrical action is such that all the vertex subgroups satisfy the \(K\)-theory Farrell-Jones Conjecture relative to the virtually infinite cyclic subgroups, then \(G\) satisfies the \(K\)-theory Farrell-Jones Conjecture relative to the virtually infinite cyclic subgroups. Similarly, if it satisfies the \(L\)-theory Farrell-Jones Conjecture relative to the family that contains the vertex stabilisers as subgroups of index \(\le 2\), then \(G\) satisfies the \(L\)-theory Farrell-Jones Conjecture relative to virtually infinite cyclic subgroups. Since acylindrical actions appear naturally in amalgamated free products over an almost malnormal subgroup, the above results give explicit calculations of Waldhausen's Nil-groups that appear in the \(K\)-theory of such groups. In particular, the author proves that the Nil-groups are, essentially, the cokernel of the assembly map from the homology groups with coefficients in the \(K\)-theory of the finite groups (the homology part of the \(K\)-theory) to the whole \(K\)-theory. The main tool for proving the Farrell-Jones Conjectures is the construction of actions on nice spaces, namely with controllable metric properties and prescribed isotropy groups. The main technical result of the paper is the construction of such action. The author proves that the acylindrical action of the group of the tree \(T\) induces an \(\mathcal{F}\)-amenable action of \(G\) on the Bowditch boundary of \(T\).