Dynamics of Irreducible Endomorphisms of F_n

Abstract: We consider the class non-surjective irreducible endomorphisms of the free group

F_{n}

. We show that such an endomorphism

p h i

is topologically represented by a simplicial immersion

f : G i g h t a r r o w G

of a marked graph

G

; along the way we classify the dynamics of

p a r t i a l p h i

acting on

p a r t i a l F_{n}

: there are at most

2 n

fixed points, all of which are attracting. After imposing a necessary additional hypothesis on

p h i

, we consider the action of

p h i

on the closure

of the Culler-Vogtmann Outer space. We show that

p h i

acts on

with "sink" dynamics: there is a unique fixed point

[T_{p h i}]

, which is attracting; for any compact neighborhood

N

of

[T_{p h i}]

, there is

K = K (N)

, such that

. The proof uses certian projections of trees coming from invariant length measures. These ideas are extended to show how to decompose a tree

T

in the boundary of Outer space by considering the space of invariant length measures on

T

; this gives a decomposition that generalizes the decomposition of geometric trees coming from Imanishi's theorem.

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