arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Dawid Kielak.
We provide a direct connection between the Z_{max} (or essential) JSJ decomposition and the Friedl--Tillmann polytope of a hyperbolic two-generator one-relator group with abelianisation of rank $2$. We deduce various structural and algorithmic properties, like the existence of a quadratic-time algorithm computing the Z_{max}-JSJ decomposition of such groups.
The topic of this survey is the phenomenon of fibring over the circle for manifolds, and its group-theoretic twin, algebraic fibring. We will discuss the state of the art, and explain briefly some of the ideas behind the more recent developments, focusing on RFRS groups and manifolds with such fundamental groups. Then we will move on to a more speculative part, where many conjectures about fibring in higher dimensions will be given. The conjectures vary in their level of plausibility, but even the boldest of them might share the fate of Thurston's Virtually Fibred Conjecture, about which Thurston famously said: ``This dubious-sounding question seems to have a definite chance for a positive answer''.
We show that a RFRS Poincaré-duality group $G$ admits a virtual epimorphism to the integers whose kernel is itself a Poincaré-duality group over every field if and only if the $L^2$-homology of $G$ vanishes and so do the positive-characteristic variants thereof. Our investigations yield a more general relationship between cohomology at infinity of groups that algebraically fibre and their fibres. In particular, we show that if the fundamental group of an aspherical manifold of dimension at least three algebraically fibres, then the fibre is one ended.
We initiate the study of torsion-free algebraically hyperbolic groups; these groups generalise torsion-free hyperbolic groups and are intricately related to groups with no Baumslag--Solitar subgroups. Indeed, for groups of cohomological dimension $2$ we prove that algebraic hyperbolicity is equivalent to containing no Baumslag--Solitar subgroups. This links algebraically hyperbolic groups to two famous questions of Gromov; recent work has shown these questions to have negative answers in general, but they remain open for groups of cohomological dimension $2$. We also prove that algebraically hyperbolic groups are CSA, and so have canonical abelian JSJ-decompositions. In the two-generated case we give a precise description of the form of these decompositions.
We give a relatively self-contained proof that if a group $G$ fibres algebraically and is part of a $\mathrm{PD}^3$-pair, then $G$ is the fundamental group of a fibred compact aspherical 3-manifold. This yields a homological proof of a classical theorem of Stallings: if $G = π_1(M^3)$ is the fundamental group of a compact irreducible 3-manifold $M^3$ and $ϕ\colon G \to \mathbb{Z}$ is a surjective homomorphism with finitely generated kernel, then $ϕ$ is induced by a topological fibration of $M^3$ over the circle.
We compute lower bounds for Kazhdan constants of Chevalley groups over the integers, endowed with the standard Steinberg generators. For types other than $\mathtt{A}_{n}$, these are the first explicit asymptotically sharp such bounds. The method relies on establishing a new connection between the structure of a root system grading a family of groups and the behaviour of the square of the Laplace operator in the family.
We construct explicit finite-dimensional orthogonal representations $π_N$ of $\operatorname{SL}_{N}(\mathbb{Z})$ for $N \in \{3,4\}$ all of whose invariant vectors are trivial, and such that $H^{N - 1}(\operatorname{SL}_{N}(\mathbb{Z}),π_N)$ is non-trivial. This implies that for $N$ as above, the group $\operatorname{SL}_{N}(\mathbb{Z})$ does not have property $(T_{N-1})$ of Bader-Sauer and therefore is not $(N-1)$-Kazhdan in the sense of De Chiffre-Glebsky-Lubotzky-Thom, both being higher versions of Kazhdan's property $T$.
We introduce the classes of TAP groups, in which various types of algebraic fibring are detected by the non-vanishing of twisted Alexander polynomials. We show that finitely presented LERF groups lie in the class $\mathsf{TAP}_1(R)$ for every integral domain $R$, and deduce that algebraic fibring is a profinite property for such groups. We offer stronger results for algebraic fibring of products of limit groups, as well as applications to profinite rigidity of Poincaré duality groups in dimension $3$ and RFRS groups.
We obtain a homological characterisation of virtually free-by-cyclic groups among groups that are hyperbolic and virtually compact special. As a consequence, we show that many groups known to be coherent actually possess the stronger property of being virtually free-by-cyclic. In particular, we show that all one-relator groups with torsion are virtually free-by-cyclic, solving a conjecture of Baumslag.
We construct the first measure-preserving affine actions with spectral gap on surfaces of arbitrary genus $g > 1$. We achieve this by finding geometric representatives of multi-twists on origami surfaces. As a major application, we construct new expanders that are coarsely distinct from the classical expanders obtained via the Laplacian as Cayley graphs of finite quotients of a group. Our methods also show that the Margulis expander, and hence the Gabber--Galil expander, is coarsely distinct from the Selberg expander.
We prove that if the $n$th $\ell^2$-Betti number of a group is non-zero then its $n$th BNSR invariant over $\mathbb{Q}$ is empty, under suitable finiteness conditions. We apply this to answer questions of Friedl--Vidussi and Llosa Isenrich--Py about aspherical Kähler manifolds, to verify some cases of the Singer Conjecture, and to compute certain BNSR invariants of poly-free and poly-surface groups.
We prove that for an elementary amenable group, coherence of the group, homological coherence of the group, and coherence of the integral group ring are all equivalent. This generalises a result of Bieri and Strebel for finitely generated soluble groups.
Let $G$ be the fundamental group of a three-manifold. By piecing together many known facts about three manifold groups, we establish two properties of the group ring $\mathbb{C}G$. We show that if $G$ has rational cohomological dimension two, then $\mathbb{C}G$ is coherent. We also show that if $G$ is torsion-free, then $G$ satisfies the Strong Atiyah Conjecture over $\mathbb{C}$ and hence that $\mathbb{C}G$ satisfies Kaplansky's Zero Divisor Conjecture.
We prove that if a compact $n$-manifold admits a sequence of residual covers that form a coboundary expander in dimension $n-2$, then the manifold has Gromov-hyperbolic fundamental group. In particular, residual sequences of covers of non-hyperbolic compact connected irreducible 3-manifolds are not 1-coboundary expanders.
We introduce the notion of quasi-BNS invariants, where we replace homomorphism to $\mathbb R$ by homogenous quasimorphisms to $\mathbb R$ in the theory of Bieri-Neumann-Strebel invariants. We prove that the quasi-BNS invariant $QΣ(G)$ of a finitely generated group $G$ is open; we connect it to approximate finite generation of almost kernels of homogenous quasimorphisms; finally we prove a Sikorav-style theorem connecting $QΣ(G)$ to the vanishing of the suitably defined Novikov homology.
The Surface Group Conjectures are statements about recognising surface groups among one-relator groups, using either the structure of their finite-index subgroups, or all subgroups. We resolve these conjectures in the two generator case. More generally, we prove that every two-generator one-relator group with every infinite-index subgroup free is itself either free or a surface group.
We study $\ell^2$ Betti numbers, coherence, and virtual fibring of random groups in the few-relator model. In particular, random groups with negative Euler characteristic are coherent, have $\ell^2$ homology concentrated in dimension 1, and embed in a virtually free-by-cyclic group with high probability. Similar results are shown with positive probability in the zero Euler characteristic case.
We prove that twisted $\ell^2$-Betti numbers of locally indicable groups are equal to the usual $\ell^2$-Betti numbers rescaled by the dimension of the twisting representation; this answers a question of Lück for this class of groups. It also leads to two formulae: given a fibration $E$ with base space $B$ having locally indicable fundamental group, and with a simply-connected fibre $F$, the first formula bounds $\ell^2$-Betti numbers $b_i^{(2)}(E)$ of $E$ in terms of $\ell^2$-Betti numbers of $B$ and usual Betti numbers of $F$; the second formula computes $b_i^{(2)}(E)$ exactly in terms of the same data, provided that $F$ is a high-dimensional sphere. We also present an inequality between twisted Alexander and Thurston norms for free-by-cyclic groups and $3$-manifolds. The technical tools we use come from the theory of generalised agrarian invariants, whose study we initiate in this paper.