Gaps in scl for amalgamated free products and RAAGs (Q1733997)

Let \(G\) be a group. The stable commutator length (scl) \(\operatorname{scl}(g)=\lim_{n \rightarrow \infty }\frac{cl(g^{n})}{n},\) where \(cl(g^{n})\) is the minimal number of commutors whose product is \(g^{n}.\) In this paper, the author studies the gap of stable commutator lengths, i.e. \(\inf \{\operatorname{scl}(g)>0\mid g\in [G,G]\}\). By Bavard's duality \(\operatorname{scl}(g)=\sup_{\phi \in Q(G)}\frac{\phi (g)}{2D(\phi )}\), it is enough to construct ``good'' quasi-morphisms \(\phi :G\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) in order to obtain lower bounds. One of the key steps in the proofs is to use the concept of letter-quasimorphisms \(\Phi :G\rightarrow \mathcal{A}\) (where \(\mathcal{A}\) is the set of alternative reduced letters in the free group \(F_{2}\)), see Definition 4.1. Fix \(g\in G.\) The author proves that for a letter-quasimorphism such that \(\Phi (g)\neq 1\) and \(\Phi (g^{n})=n\Phi (g)\) for all natural number \(n,\) there is an explicit homogeneous quasimorphism \( \varphi :G\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) such that \(\varphi (g)\geq 1\) and the defect \(D(\varphi )\leq 1.\) In particular, \(\operatorname{scl}(g)\geq 1/2.\) As applications to amalgamated free products and right-angled Artin groups, the author proves that every element \(g\) in the commutator subgroup of \(G=A\ast _{C}B\) which does not conjugate into \(A\) or \(B\) satisfies \(\operatorname{scl}(g)\geq 1/2\), provided that \(C\) embeds as a left relatively convex subgroup in both \(A\) and \(B\). Furthermore, every non-trivial element \(g\) in the commutator subgroup of a right-angled Artin group \(G\) satisfies \(\operatorname{scl}(g)\geq 1/2\).