Let $G$ be a torsion-free hyperbolic group, let $S$ be a finite generating set of $G$, and let $f$ be an automorphism of $G$. We want to understand the possible growth types for the word length of $f^n(g)$, where $g$ is an element of $G$. Growth was completely described by Thurston when $G$ is the fundamental group of a hyperbolic surface, and can be understood from Bestvina-Handel's work on train-tracks when $G$ is a free group. We address the general case of a torsion-free hyperbolic group $G$; we show that every element in $G$ has a well-defined exponential growth rate under iteration of $f$, and that only finitely many exponential growth rates arise as $g$ varies in $G$. In addition, we show the following dichotomy: every element of $G$ grows either exponentially fast or polynomially fast under iteration of $f$.
This is a joint work with Rémi Coulon, Arnaud Hilion and Gilbert Levitt.[-]

Bestvina-Mess showed that the duality properties of a group $G$ are encoded in any boundary that gives a Z-compactification of $G$. For example, a hyperbolic group with Gromov boundary an $n$-sphere is a PD$(n+1)$ group. For relatively hyperbolic pairs $(G,P)$, the natural boundary - the Bowditch boundary - does not give a Z-compactification of G. Nevertheless we show that if the Bowditch boundary of $(G,P)$ is a 2-sphere, then $(G,P)$ is a PD(3) pair.
This is joint work with Genevieve Walsh.[-]

A well-known result of Davis-Januszkiewicz is that every right-angled Artin group (RAAG) is commensurable to some rightangled Coxeter group (RACG). In this talk we consider the converse question: which RACGs are commensurable to some RAAG? To do so, we investigate some natural candidate RAAG subgroups of RACGs and characterize when such subgroups are indeed RAAGs. As an application, we show that a 2-dimensional, one-ended RACG with planar defining graph is quasiisometric to a RAAG if and only if it is commensurable to a RAAG. This talk is based on work joint with Pallavi Dani.[-]

If a group G acts isometrically on a metric space X and Y is any metric space that is quasi-isometric to X, then G quasi-acts on Y. A fundamental problem in geometric group theory is to straighten (or quasi-conjugate) a quasi-action to an isometric action on a nice space. We will introduce and investigate discretisable spaces, those for which every cobounded quasi-action can be quasi-conjugated to an isometric action of a locally finite graph. Work of Mosher-Sageev-Whyte shows that free groups have this property, but it holds much more generally. For instance, we show that every hyperbolic group is either commensurable to a cocompact lattice in rank one Lie group, or it is discretisable.
We give several applications and indicate possible future directions of this ongoing work, particularly in showing that normal and almost normal subgroups are often preserved by quasi-isometries. For instance, we show that any finitely generated group quasi-isometric to a Z-by-hyperbolic group is Z-by-hyperbolic. We also show that within the class of residually finite groups, the class of central extensions of finitely generated abelian groups by hyperbolic groups is closed under quasi-isometries.[-]

The famous Hanna Neumann Conjecture (now the Friedman--Mineyev theorem) gives an upper bound for the ranks of the intersection of arbitrary subgroups H and K of a non-abelian free group. It is an interesting question to 'quantify' this bound with respect to the rank of the join of H and K, the subgroup generated by H and K. In this talk I describe what is known about the set of realizable values (rank of join, rank of intersection) for arbitrary H, K, and about my recent results in this direction. In particular, we resolve the remaining open case (m=4) of Guzman's `Group-Theoretic Conjecture' in the affirmative. This has some interesting corollaries for the geometry of hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Our methods rely on recasting the topological pushout of core graphs in terms of the Dicks graphs introduced in the context of his Amalgamated Graph Conjecture. This allows to translate the question of existence of a pair of subgroups H,K with prescribed ranks of joins and intersections into graph theoretic language, and completely resolve it in some cases. In particular, we completely describe the locus of realizable values of ranks in the case when the rank of one of the subgroups H,K equals two.[-]

The relationship between the large-scale geometry of a group and its algebraic structure can be studied via three notions: a group's quasi-isometry class, a group's abstract commensurability class, and geometric actions on proper geodesic metric spaces. A common model geometry for groups G and G' is a proper geodesic metric space on which G and G' act geometrically. A group G is action rigid if every group G' that has a common model geometry with G is abstractly commensurable to G. For example, a closed hyperbolic n-manifold is not action rigid for all n at least three. In contrast, we show that free products of closed hyperbolic manifold groups are action rigid. Consequently, we obtain the first examples of Gromov hyperbolic groups that are quasi-isometric but do not virtually have a common model geometry. This is joint work with Daniel Woodhouse.[-]