The minimally displaced set of an irreducible automorphism of \(F_N\) is co-compact (Q2025593)

Let \(F_{N}\) be the free group on \(N\) (\(N \geq 2\)) generators. An automorphism \(\phi \in \mathrm{Aut}(F_{N})\) is called irreducible if there does not exist a free product decomposition \(F_{N} = A_{1} \ast \dots \ast A_{k} \ast B\) with \(k \geq 1\) and \(A_{i} \not =1\) (\(i \in \{1, \ldots,k\}\)) such that \(\phi\) permutes the conjugacy classes of \(A_{i}\) (reviewer's remark: Definition 2.13 in the paper is incorrect as \(B\) can never be empty, possibly it can happen that \(B=1\)). \textit{M. Culler} and \textit{K. Vogtmann} in [Invent. Math. 84, 91--119 (1986; Zbl 0589.20022)] constructed a contractible ``outer space'' \(CV_{N}\) on which the group \(\mathrm{Out}(F_{N})\) acts properly. If \(\Gamma\) denote the asymmetric Lipschitz metric of \(CV_{N}\), the displacement of \(\phi\) is defined as \(\lambda_{\phi}= \inf \{ \Gamma(X,X^{\phi}) \mid X \in CV_{N}\}\). In the case where \(\phi\) is irreducible, there are points in \(CV_{N}\) which are displaced by exactly the minimum \(\lambda_{\phi}\), these points constitute the min-set \(\mathrm{Min}(\phi)\). For an automorphism \(\phi\), the centraliser \(C(\phi)=C_{\mathrm{Out}(F_{N})}(\phi)\) preserves the min-set \(\mathrm{Min}(\phi)\). The main result of the paper is Theorem 3.1: Let \(\phi\) be an irreducible automorphism of \(F_{N}\) with \(\lambda_{\phi}> 1\). The quotient space \(\mathrm{Min}(\phi)/C(\phi)\) is compact. As a consequence the authors prove that, under the same assumptions of Theorem 3.1, also \(\mathrm{Min}(\phi)/\langle \phi \rangle\) is compact (this happens because, from known results, it follows that \(C(\phi)\) is virtually cyclic). The previous result is stated twice as Theorem 3.3 and Theorem 3.4. Another interesting result is Theorem 3.9: Let \(\phi\) be an irreducible automorphism of \(F_{N}\) with \(\lambda_{\phi} = 1\). There is a single point \(T \in CV_{N}\) so that \(\mathrm{Min}(\phi) = \mathrm{Fix}(\phi) = \{T\}\) (in particular \(C(\phi)\) is finite).