Limit groups and groups acting freely on \(\mathbb{R}^n\)-trees. (Q2388838)

A `limit group' is a limit of free groups in the space of marked groups. A theorem due to Kharlampovich-Myasnikov, Pfander and Sela states that a limit group is inductively obtained from free Abelian groups and surface groups by taking free products and amalgamations over \(\mathbb{Z}\). This implies that such a group is finitely presented, that it has a finite classifying space, that its Abelian subgroups are finitely generated and that it contains only finitely many conjugacy classes of non-cyclic maximal Abelian subgroups. In the paper under review, the author gives another proof of the fact that a limit group is inductively obtained from free Abelian groups and surface groups by taking free products and amalgamations over \(\mathbb{Z}\). He first proves that a limit group acts freely on an \(\mathbb{R}^n\)-tree, and he then proves that a finitely generated group acting freely on an \(\mathbb{R}^n\)-tree can be obtained from free Abelian groups and from surface groups by a finite sequence of free products and amalgamation over cyclic groups.