On the failure of the co-Hopf property for subgroups of word-hyperbolic groups (Q5935804)

A group \(H\) is said to be co-Hopfian if any injective endomorphism \(H\to H\) is an automorphism. Examples of co-Hopfian groups include finite groups and fundamental groups of closed aspherical \(n\)-dimensional manifolds of nonzero Euler characteristic. S. Zela proved that if \(G\) is a torsion-free freely indecomposable non-elementary word-hyperbolic group, then \(G\) is co-Hopfian. In this paper, the authors prove that this property does not hold for general finitely generated subgroups of torsion-free word-hyperbolic groups. More precisely, they prove the following Theorem: There exists a torsion-free word-hyperbolic group \(G\) and a subgroup \(H\) of \(G\) such that the following three properties hold: (i) The group \(H\) is two-generated and non-elementary. (ii) The group \(H\) does not admit a nontrivial cyclic splitting (and therefore \(H\) is freely indecomposable and one-ended). (iii) The group \(H\) is conjugate in \(G\) to a proper subgroup of itself. In particular, \(H\) is not co-Hopfian.