Splittings of generalized Baumslag-Solitar groups. (Q861669)

A generalized Baumslag-Solitar group is the fundamental group of a graph of infinite cyclic groups. Equivalently, it is a group that acts on a simplicial tree with infinite cyclic vertex and edge stabilizers. Such trees are called generalized Baumslag-Solitar trees. The paper under review explores the structure of generalized Baumslag-Solitar groups by studying the space of all generalized Baumslag-Solitar trees for a given group. In most cases this space is a deformation space consisting of trees related to a given one by a deformation (a sequence of certain collapse or expansion moves). Two notions of complexity for generalized Baumslag-Solitar trees are the number of edge orbits and the number of vertex orbits. The local minima for both notions within a deformation space occur at the reduced trees (trees for which no collapse moves are possible). The paper also defines fully reduced trees, which when they exist, globally minimize complexity in a deformation space. Note that fully reduced trees are reduced. One of the main results of the paper is Theorem 3.3 which states that every generalized Baumslag-Solitar tree can be made fully reduced by a deformation. The second part of the paper focuses on generalized Baumslag-Solitar groups having no non-trivial integral moduli. It is proved in Theorem 7.4 that for such groups the deformations between reduced trees can be expressed as sequences of slide moves, which do not change complexity. The author uses this result to solve the isomorphism problem for these groups. He shows that if \(G\) is a finitely generated generalized Baumslag-Solitar group with no non-trivial integral moduli, then there are only finitely many graphs of groups with fundamental group \(G\). As a corollary, he gives an algorithm for determining when two indexed graphs define the same group.