arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Peter Scott.
We prove relative versions of many earlier results about almost invariant sets and splittings of groups. In particular, we prove a relative version of the algebraic torus theorem, and we prove the existence and uniqueness of relative versions of algebraic regular neighbourhoods and of JSJ decompositions.
We prove the analogue of Johannson's Deformation Theorem for PD3 pairs.
Analogues of JSJ decompositions were developed for Poincar\'e duality pairs in [19]. These decompositions depend only on the group. Our focus will be on describing the edge splittings of these decompositions more precisely. We use our results to compare these decompositions with two other closely related decompositions.
We study closed geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces, and give bounds for their angles of intersection and self-intersection, and for the sides of the polygons that they form, depending only on the lengths of the geodesics
We give a more geometric approach to an algorithm for deciding whether two hyperbolic 3-manifolds are homeomorphic. We also give a more algebraic approach to the homeomorphism problem for geometric, but non-hyperbolic, 3-manifolds.
We introduce a combinatorial energy for maps of triangulated surfaces with simplicial metrics and analyze the existence and uniqueness properties of the corresponding harmonic maps. We show that some important applications of smooth harmonic maps can be obtained in this setting.
The intersection pattern of the translates of the limit set of a quasi-convex subgroup of a hyperbolic group can be coded in a natural incidence graph, which suggests connections with the splittings of the ambient group. A similar incidence graph exists for any subgroup of a group. We show that the disconnectedness of this graph for codimension one subgroups leads to splittings. We also reprove some results of Peter Kropholler on splittings of groups over malnormal subgroups and variants of them.
The authors previously described an algebraic analogue of the JSJ-decomposition of a 3-manifold. This analogue is defined for any finitely presented, one-ended group. We study this analogue in the special case of Poincar\'e duality pairs.
We combine ideas of Scott and Swarup on good position for almost invariant subsets of a group with ideas of Sageev on constructing cubings from such sets. We construct cubings which are more canonical than in Sageev's original construction. We also show that almost invariant sets can be chosen to be in very good position.
We find canonical decompositions for finitely presented groups which specialize to the classical JSJ-decomposition when restricted to the fundamental groups of Haken manifolds. The decompositions that we obtain are invariant under automorphisms of the group. A crucial new ingredient is the concept of a regular neighbourhood for a finite family of almost invariant subsets of a group. An almost invariant set is an analogue of an immersion.
We introduce the notion of a `canonical' splitting over Z or ZxZ for a finitely generated group G. We show that when G happens to be the fundamental group of an orientable Haken manifold M with incompressible boundary, then the decomposition of the group naturally obtained from canonical splittings is closely related to the one given by the standard JSJ-decomposition of M. This leads to a new proof of Johannson's Deformation Theorem.
We study configurations of immersed curves in surfaces and surfaces in 3-manifolds. Among other results, we show that primitive curves have only finitely many configurations which minimize the number of double points. We give examples of minimal configurations not realized by geodesics in any hyperbolic metric.
We prove algebraic analogues of the facts that a curve on a surface with self-intersection number zero is homotopic to a cover of a simple curve, and that two simple curves on a surface with intersection number zero can be isotoped to be disjoint.
This paper determines which orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds contain simple closed geodesics. The Fuchsian group corresponding to the thrice-punctured sphere generates the only example of a complete non-elementary orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold that does not contain a simple closed geodesic. We do not assume that the manifold is geometrically finite or that it has finitely generated fundamental group.
We prove the existence of a geometric characteristic submanifold for non-positively curved manifolds of any dimension greater than or equal to three. In dimension three, our result is a geometric version of the topological characteristic submanifold theorem due to Jaco, Shalen and Johannson.
For suitable subgroups of a finitely generated group, we define the intersection number of one subgroup with another subgroup and show that this number is symmetric. We also give an interpretation of this number.
We present an extension of Dunwoody's theory of tracks and use it to prove an analogue of the annulus theorem for hyperbolic groups.