Quasi Actions On Trees Ii Finite Depth Bass Serre Trees

This paper addresses questions of quasi-isometric rigidity and classification for fundamental groups of finite graphs of groups, under the assumption that the Bass-Serre tree of the graph of groups has finite depth. The main example of a finite depth graph of groups is one whose vertex and edge groups are coarse Poincare duality groups. The main theorem says that, under certain hypotheses, if $\mathcal{G}$ is a finite graph of coarse Poincare duality groups, then any finitely generated group quasi-isometric to the fundamental group of $\mathcal{G}$ is also the fundamental group of a finite graph of coarse Poincare duality groups, and any quasi-isometry between two such groups must coarsely preserve the vertex and edge spaces of their Bass-Serre trees of spaces. Besides some simple normalization hypotheses, the main hypothesis is the ``crossing graph condition'', which is imposed on each vertex group $\mathcal{G}_v$ which is an $n$-dimensional coarse Poincare duality group for which every incident edge group has positive codimension: the crossing graph of $\mathcal{G}_v$ is a graph $\epsilon_v$ that describes the pattern in which the codimension 1 edge groups incident to $\mathcal{G}_v$ are crossed by other edge groups incident to $\mathcal{G}_v$, and the crossing graph condition requires that $\epsilon_v$ be connected or empty.

"November 2011, volume 214, number 1008 (fourth of 5 numbers)."

A snapshot of the major renaissance happening today in the study of locally compact groups and their many applications.

The key idea in geometric group theory is to study infinite groups by endowing them with a metric and treating them as geometric spaces. This applies to many groups naturally appearing in topology, geometry, and algebra, such as fundamental groups of manifolds, groups of matrices with integer coefficients, etc. The primary focus of this book is to cover the foundations of geometric group theory, including coarse topology, ultralimits and asymptotic cones, hyperbolic groups, isoperimetric inequalities, growth of groups, amenability, Kazhdan's Property (T) and the Haagerup property, as well as their characterizations in terms of group actions on median spaces and spaces with walls. The book contains proofs of several fundamental results of geometric group theory, such as Gromov's theorem on groups of polynomial growth, Tits's alternative, Stallings's theorem on ends of groups, Dunwoody's accessibility theorem, the Mostow Rigidity Theorem, and quasiisometric rigidity theorems of Tukia and Schwartz. This is the first book in which geometric group theory is presented in a form accessible to advanced graduate students and young research mathematicians. It fills a big gap in the literature and will be used by researchers in geometric group theory and its applications.

Let $\mathfrak{g}$ be a real or complex (finite dimensional) simple Lie algebra and $\sigma\in\mathrm{Aut}\mathfrak{g}$. The authors study automorphisms of the twisted loop algebra $L(\mathfrak{g},\sigma)$ of smooth $\sigma$-periodic maps from $\mathbb{R}$ to $\mathfrak{g}$ as well as of the ``smooth'' affine Kac-Moody algebra $\hat L(\mathfrak{g},\sigma)$, which is a $2$-dimensional extension of $L(\mathfrak{g},\sigma)$. It turns out that these automorphisms which either preserve or reverse the orientation of loops, and are correspondingly called to be of first and second kind, can be described essentially by curves of automorphisms of $\mathfrak{g}$. If the order of the automorphisms is finite, then the corresponding curves in $\mathrm{Aut}\mathfrak{g}$ allow us to define certain invariants and these turn out to parametrize the conjugacy classes of the automorphisms. If their order is $2$ the authors carry this out in detail and deduce a complete classification of involutions and real forms (which correspond to conjugate linear involutions) of smooth affine Kac-Moody algebras.

The resulting classification can be seen as an extension of Cartan's classification of symmetric spaces, i.e. of involutions on $\mathfrak{g}$. If $\mathfrak{g}$ is compact, then conjugate linear extensions of involutions from $\hat L(\mathfrak{g},\sigma)$ to conjugate linear involutions on $\hat L(\mathfrak{g}_{\mathbb{C}},\sigma_{\mathbb{C}})$ yield a bijection between their conjugacy classes and this gives existence and uniqueness of Cartan decompositions of real forms of complex smooth affine Kac-Moody algebras.

The authors show that their methods work equally well also in the algebraic case where the loops are assumed to have finite Fourier expansions.

The authors consider the two matrix model with an even quartic potential $W(y)=y^4/4+\alpha y^2/2$ and an even polynomial potential $V(x)$. The main result of the paper is the formulation of a vector equilibrium problem for the limiting mean density for the eigenvalues of one of the matrices $M_1$. The vector equilibrium problem is defined for three measures, with external fields on the first and third measures and an upper constraint on the second measure. The proof is based on a steepest descent analysis of a $4\times4$ matrix valued Riemann-Hilbert problem that characterizes the correlation kernel for the eigenvalues of $M_1$. The authors' results generalize earlier results for the case $\alpha=0$, where the external field on the third measure was not present.

The authors prove that the kernel of the action of the modular group on the center of a semisimple factorizable Hopf algebra is a congruence subgroup whenever this action is linear. If the action is only projective, they show that the projective kernel is a congruence subgroup. To do this, they introduce a class of generalized Frobenius-Schur indicators and endow it with an action of the modular group that is compatible with the original one.

"November 2012, volume 220, number 1035 (third of 4 numbers)."