Fixed subgroups of endomorphisms of free products. (Q2456184)

If \(G=*^n_{i=1}G_i\) and \(H=*^m_{i=1}H_i\) are free products of groups, then a homomorphism \(\varphi\colon G\to H\) is said to be symmetric if each non-infinite-cyclic free factor of \(G\) is mapped by \(\varphi\) into a conjugate of some non-infinite-cyclic factor of \(H\). If \(G=*^n_{i=1}G_i\) is a free product and \(H\) a non-trivial subgroup of \(G\), then \(H\), by the Kurosh subgroup theorem, is a free product \(H=*_{i\in I}H_i*F\), where \(F\) is a free group and each factor \(H_i\) is the intersection of \(H\) with a conjugate of a \(G_i\). For finite \(|I|\) and \(r(F)\) (where \(r(F)\) the rank of \(F\)), the Kurosh rank of \(H\) (with respect to the splitting of \(G\)) is defined to be \(r(F)+|I|\). The main results of the paper are: Let \(G=*^n_{i=1}G_i*F\), where each factor \(G_i\) is not infinite cyclic and \(F\) is a free group. If \(\varphi\colon G\to G\) is a symmetric monomorphism of \(G\), then the fixed subgroup \(\text{Fix}(\varphi)\) of \(\varphi\) has Kurosh rank at most \(n+r(F)\). Let \(G=*^n_{i=1}G_i*F\) be a finitely generated residually finite group, where each factor \(G_i\) is not infinite cyclic and \(F\) is a free group. If \(\varphi\) is a symmetric endomorphism of \(G\), then the fixed subgroup \(\text{Fix}(\varphi)\) of \(\varphi\) has Kurosh rank at most \(n+r(F)\). There are also some interesting corollaries.