arXiv subjects

Jacek Swiatkowski

Publications and source records attributed to Jacek Swiatkowski.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2016

Trees of metric compacta and trees of manifolds

We present a construction, called the limit of a tree system of spaces (or, less formally, a tree of spaces). The construction is designed to produce compact metric spaces that resemble fractals, out of more regular spaces, such as closed manifolds, compact polyhedra, compact Menger manifolds, etc. Such spaces are potential candidates to be homeomorphic to ideal boundaries of infinite groups. A very special case of this construction, trees of manifolds (known also as Jakobsche spaces), has been studied in the literature. We present here a different approach, much more general, and, as we believe, much more convenient for establishing various basic properties of the resulting spaces, in a more general setting. Already in the case of trees of manifolds, using this approach we clarify, correct and extend so far known results and properties.

math.GT↗

arXiv2016

Trees of manifolds as boundaries of spaces and groups

We show that trees of manifolds, the topological spaces introduced by Jakobsche, appear as boundaries at infinity of various spaces and groups. In particular, they appear as Gromov boundaries of some hyperbolic groups, of arbitrary dimension, obtained by the procedure of strict hyperbolization. We also recognize these spaces as boundaries of arbitrary Coxeter groups with manifold nerves, and as Gromov boundaries of the fundamental groups of singular spaces obtained from some finite volume hyperbolic manifolds by cutting off their cusps and collapsing the resulting boundary tori to points.

math.GR↗

arXiv2015

On asymptotically hereditarily aspherical groups

We undertake a systematic study of asymptotically hereditarily aspherical (AHA) groups - the class of groups introduced by Tadeusz Januszkiewicz and the second author as a tool for exhibiting exotic properties of systolic groups. We provide many new examples of AHA groups, also in high dimensions. We relate AHA property with the topology at infinity of a group, and deduce in this way some new properties of (weakly) systolic groups. We also exhibit an interesting property of boundary at infinity for few classes of AHA groups.

math.GR↗

arXiv2014

The dense amalgam of metric compacta and topological characterization of boundaries of free products of groups

We introduce and study the operation, called dense amalgam, which to any tuple X_1,...,X_k of non-empty compact metric spaces associates some disconnected perfect compact metric space, denoted $\widetilde\sqcup(X_1,...,X_k)$, in which there are many appropriately distributed copies of the spaces X_1,...,X_k. We then show that, in various settings, the ideal boundary of the free product of groups is homeomorphic to the dense amalgam of boundaries of the factors. We give also related more general results for graphs of groups with finite edge groups. We justify these results by referring to a convenient characterization of dense amalgams, in terms of a list of properties, which we also provide in the paper. As another application, we show that the boundary of a Coxeter group which has infinitely many ends, and which is not virtually free, is the dense amalgam of the boundaries of its maximal 1-ended special subgroups.

math.GT↗

arXiv2003

Contact Structures, sigma-confoliations, and contaminations in 3-manifolds

We propose in this paper a method for studying contact structures in 3-manifolds by means of branched surfaces. We explain what it means for a contact structure to be carried by a branched surface embedded in a 3-manifold. To make the transition from contact structures to branched surfaces, we first define auxiliary objects called sigma-confoliations and pure contaminations, both generalizing contact structures. We study various deformations of these objects and show that the sigma-confoliations and pure contaminations obtained by suitably modifying a contact structure remember the contact structure up to isotopy. After defining tightness for all pure contaminations in a natural way, generalizing the definition of tightness for contact structures, we obtain some conditions on (the embedding of) a branched surface in a 3-manifold sufficient to guarantee that any pure contamination carried by the branched surface is tight. We also find conditions sufficient to prove that a branched surface carries only overtwisted (non-tight) contact structures.

math.GT↗

arXiv2003

A contamination carrying criterion for branched surfaces

A contamination in a 3-manifold is an object interpolating between the contact structure and the lamination. Contaminations seem to provide a link between 3-dimensional contact geometry and the classical topology of 3-manifolds, as described in a separate paper. In this paper we deal with contaminations carried by branched surfaces, giving a sufficient condition for a branched surface to carry a pure contamination.

math.GT↗

arXiv2001

Commensurability of graph products

We define graph products of families of pairs of groups and study the question when two such graph products are commensurable. As an application we prove linearity of certain graph products.

math.GR↗