Relatively hyperbolic groups with free abelian second cohomology (Q2161367)

Qualitatively, if we have a group \(G\) and a subgroup \(P\), then we can modify the Cayley graph for \(G\) to attach a ``cusp'' to \(P\), essentially turning \(P\) into a hyperbolic horoball. The idea is that \(G\) may not be hyperbolic, but the result after attaching a horoball to \(P\) might be hyperbolic. In this case, \(G\) is said to be relatively hyperbolic with respect to \(P\). The process generalizes to a collection of subgroups \(\{P_1, \dots, P_n\}\). If there is some property X that holds in hyperbolic groups and also for the groups \(P_i\), then if \(G\) is relatively hyperbolic with respect to the \(P_i\), we might expect that (or at least ask if) property X holds for \(G\). The main results of this paper relate relative hyperbolicity to having free abelian second cohomology and having semistable fundamental group (or first homology) at \(\infty\). The main theorem is (Theorem 1.1) Suppose a finitely presented group \(G\) is hyperbolic relative to \(\mathcal{P} = \{P_1, \dots, P_n\}\) a set of finitely presented subgroups (with \(G\ne P_i\) for all \(i\)). If for each \(i\), \(H^2(P_i,\mathbb{Z}P_i)\) is free abelian, then \(H^2(G,\mathbb{Z}G)\) is free abelian. One of the main key results on the way to proving this Theorem~1.1 is (Theorem 1.4) Suppose a finitely presented group \(G\) is hyperbolic relative to \(\mathcal{P} = \{P_1, \dots, P_n\}\) a set of 1-ended finitely presented subgroups (with \(G\ne P_i\) for all \(i\)). Then a cusped space for \((G,\mathcal{P})\) has semistable fundamental group at \(\infty\). We remark that the cusped space referenced in Theorem~1.4 is the space obtained in our (vague) definition above by attaching horoballs to the \(P_i\). A group has semistable fundamental group (resp. first homology) at \(\infty\) if any two rays in the universal cover are homotopic (resp. homologous). These two results provide a good sense of the flavor of the paper, which is a nice tour through relatively hyperbolic groups, group cohomology, and semistable fundamental group/first homology at infinity. The main technically detailed sections of the paper are the proof of Theorem~1.4 and Section 6, whose goal is to prove the technical Theorem~6.1, a result about simplicial homotopies that arise in the study of semistable fundamental group at \(\infty\). In other words, although the main takeaway result (and a succession of results in Section 2) deals with second group cohomology, the main detailed arguments involve careful analysis of maps into \(\delta\)-hyperbolic spaces.