Makanin-Razborov diagrams over free products. (Q716389)

A part of the techniques and results obtained over free and hyperbolic groups to study systems of equations are generalized to arbitrary free products of groups. Limit groups are introduced over the class of free products, and it is shown that a finitely presented group has a canonical finite set of maximal limit quotients. This set is extended to associate a Makanin-Razborov diagram over free products with every finitely presented group. A connection with solution sets of systems of equtions over free products is established. The Makanin-Razborov diagram over free products is the first step towards the analysis of the first order theory of free products that is promised by the authors will appear in the sequel. This study was motivated by a question of the first author on the stability of a free product of stable groups. Also, the authors claim that the diagram that they construct provides the tools to deal with another well known problem, the question of an elementary equivalence between two free products with respectively elementary equivalent factors.