The braided Ptolemy-Thompson group is asynchronously combable (Q550554)

A combing of a group \(G\) with a finite generating set \(S\) is map which associates to each element \(g \in G\) a path \(\sigma_g\) from \(1\) to \(g\) in the Cayley graph \(C(G, S)\). We say that \(G\) is asynchronously combable if there is an asynchronously bounded combing \(\sigma\) of \(G\), which roughly means that there is an upper bound for the distance between the (reparametrized) combing paths associated to two elements \(g\) and \(g'\) at distance 1. The braided Ptolemy-Thompson group \(T^\star\) is an extension of the Thompson group \(T\) by the braid group \(B_\infty\) on infinite many strands. It is a fact that \(T^\star\) is essentially the mapping class group of a certain non-compact planar surface with countably many punctures and boundary components. The homeomorphisms which are considered here must preserve a fixed binary tree outside a suitable compact set. The main theorem of this paper states that \(T^\star\) is asynchronously combable. The result is interesting because it is surprising that the mapping class group of a surface of infinite topological type has such a finiteness geometric property. The proof is inspired by a result of \textit{L. Mosher} [Ann. Math. (2) 142, No. 2, 303--384 (1995; Zbl 0867.57004)] stating that the mapping class group of a compact surface is automatic (a stronger property than being asynchronously combable). Schematically, the proof goes as follows. First, the author shows that the Thompson group (which is simpler that \(T^\star\)) is asynchronously combable, by means of certain normal forms studied in Mosher's paper cited above. Then, by a rather involved argument, the author constructs a combing on \(T^\star\) based on a set of two generators that is asynchronously bounded.