Representations of polygons of finite groups.

DOI10.2140/GT.2005.9.1915MaRDI QIDQ813158zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 30 January 2006

Published in Geometry \& Topology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0310001, https://eudml.org/doc/129996

fundamental groups Gromov-hyperbolic groups isometric properly discontinuous actions polygons of finite groups surface groups

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Free products of groups, free products with amalgamation, Higman-Neumann-Neumann extensions, and generalizations (20E06) Hyperbolic groups and nonpositively curved groups (20F67) Global geometric and topological methods (à la Gromov); differential geometric analysis on metric spaces (53C23) Topological methods in group theory (57M07)

Abstract: We construct discrete and faithful representations into the isometry group of a hyperbolic space of the fundamental groups of acute negatively curved even-sided polygons of finite groups.

Review text

From the introduction: There are only few known obstructions for existence of an isometric properly discontinuous action of a Gromov-hyperbolic group \(G\) on the real-hyperbolic space \(\mathbb{H}^p\) for some \(p\): (1) If \(G\) is a group satisfying Kazhdan property (T) then each isometric action \(G\curvearrowright\mathbb{H}^p\) fixes a point in \(\mathbb{H}^p\); hence no infinite hyperbolic group satisfying property (T) admits an isometric properly discontinuous action \(G\curvearrowright\mathbb{H}^p\), for any \(p\). (2) Suppose that \(G\) is the fundamental group of a compact Kähler manifold and \(G\curvearrowright\mathbb{H}^p\) is an isometric properly discontinuous action. Then, according to a theorem of \textit{J. A. Carlson} and \textit{D. Toledo} [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 69, 173-201 (1989; Zbl 0695.58010)], this action factors through an epimorphism \(G\to Q\), where \(Q\) is commensurable to a surface group. Hence, unless \(G\) itself is commensurable to a surface group, it does not admit an isometric properly discontinuous action \(G\curvearrowright\mathbb{H}^p\). Examples of Gromov-hyperbolic groups which are Kähler (and are not commensurable to surface groups) are given by the uniform lattices in \(\text{PU}(m,1)\), \(m\geq 2\), as well as the fundamental groups of compact negatively curved Kähler manifolds. On the positive side, by a theorem of \textit{M. Bonk} and \textit{O. Schramm} [Geom. Funct. Anal. 10, No. 2, 266-306 (2000; Zbl 0972.53021)], each Gromov-hyperbolic group admits a quasi-isometric embedding to a real-hyperbolic space. The goal of this paper is to find a better ``demarcation line between hyperbolic groups satisfying property (T) and groups acting discretely on real-hyperbolic spaces. In this paper we show that a large class of 2-dimensional Gromov-hyperbolic groups admits isometric properly discontinuous convex-cocompact actions on real-hyperbolic spaces. We consider a 2-dimensional negatively curved acute polygon \(\mathcal P\) of finite groups (see Section 2.2 for more details). Let \(G:=\pi_1(\mathcal P)\) be the fundamental group of this polygon. Our main result is: Theorem 1.1. Suppose that \(n=2k\) is even. Then the group \(G\) admits a discrete, faithful, convex-cocompact action \(\rho\) on a constant curvature hyperbolic space \(\mathbb{H}^p\), where \(p<\infty\) depends on the polygon \(\mathcal P\). Our technique in general does not work in the case when \(n\) is odd: We were unable to construct a representation. However in Section 6 we will construct \(\rho\) and prove that it is discrete, faithful, convex-cocompact for a special class of odd-sided \(n\)-gons of groups, provided that \(n\geq 5\).

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