Limit groups and groups acting freely on Rn–trees限制在树上自由行动的组和组.pdfVIP

ISSN 1364-0380 (on line) 1465-3060 (printed) 1427 Geometry Topology G G G T T T TT Volume 8 (2004) 1427–1470 G T G T Published: 27 November 2004 G T G T G T G T GG T GG T T G G T n Limit groups and groups acting freely on R –trees Vincent Guirardel Laboratoire E. Picard, UMR 5580, Bˆat 1R2 Universit´e Paul Sabatier, 118 rte de Narbonne 31062 Toulouse cedex 4, France Email: guirardel@picard.ups-tlse.fr Abstract We give a simple proof of the finite presentation of Sela’s limit groups by using n free actions on R –trees. We first prove that Sela’s limit groups do have a free n action on an R –tree. We then prove that a finitely generated group having a n free action on an R –tree can be obtained from free abelian groups and surface groups by a finite sequence of free products and amalgamations over cyclic groups. As a corollary, such a group is finitely presented, has a finite classifying space, its abelian subgroups are finitely generated and contains only finitely many conjugacy classes of non-cyclic maximal abelian subgroups. AMS Classification numbers Primary: 20E08 Secondary: 20E26 n Keywords: R –tree, limit group, finite presentation Proposed: Martin Bridson Receive