Growth tightness of surface groups (Q1857373)

Let \(\Gamma\) be a group of isometries of a complete Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) acting freely and properly continuously. The distance \(d=d_g\) on \(\Gamma\) is defined by identification of the group with the orbit of some fixed point \(p\in M\) and by taking the restriction to \(\Gamma p\) of the Riemannian distance of \(M\). The entropy of \((\Gamma, d)\) is the exponential growth rate of \(\Gamma\) measured with respect to the metric \(d\), that is, \(\text{Ent}(\Gamma, d)=\limsup_{R\to\infty} R^{-1} \cdot \log \beta_{(\Gamma, d)} (R)\), where \(\beta_{(\Gamma, d)}(R)=\#B_{(\Gamma, d)} (e,R)\) is the growth function of \((\Gamma, d)\), given by the cardinality of balls of radius \(R\) centered at the identity \(e\). The couple \((\Gamma, d)\) is said to be growth tight if \(\text{Ent}(\Gamma, d)> \text{Ent} (\Gamma/N, d/N)\) for every nontrivial normal subgroup \(N\). If \(\Gamma\) is the fundamental group of a Riemannian manifold \(M_0\) acting on its universal covering \(M\), then \(M_0\) is growth tight. In this paper, the author proves that a fundamental group of a closed oriented surface \(\Sigma_h\) of genus \(h\geq 2\) is growth tight with respect to the hyperbolic metric and to the word metric relative to its canonical presentation. As an application, the author gives a new, purely analytic proof of Hopficity of surface groups.