Given a nontrivial conjugacy class $g$ in a free group $F_{N}$, what can we say about the typical growth of g under application of a random product of auto-morphisms of $F_{N}$? I will present a law of large numbers, a central limit theorem and a spectral theorem in this context. Similar results also hold for the growth of simple closed curves on a closed hyperbolic surface, under application of a random product of mapping classes of the surface. This is partly joint work with François Dahmani.[-]

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.[-]

Right-angled Artin groups, aka partially commutative groups, naturally define an interpolation between free groups and abelian free groups. The mini-course is dedicated to the question: given two right-angled Artin groups, how can we know whether one is isomorphic to a subgroup of the other? Even though this is a basic algebraic question, it remains widely open in full generality. Our goal will be to show how the combinatorial geometry of quasi-median graphs hilights some aspects of this problem. [-]

Given a finite simple graph X, the right-angled Artin group associated to X is defined by the following very simple presentation: it has one generator per vertex of X, and the only relations consist in imposing that two generators corresponding to adjacent vertices commute. We investigate right-angled Artin groups from the point of view of measured group theory. Our main theorem is that two right-angled Artin groups with finite outer automorphism groups are measure equivalent if and only if they are isomorphic. On the other hand, right-angled Artin groups are never superrigid from this point of view: given any right-angled Artin group G, I will also describe two ways of producing groups that are measure equivalent to G but not commensurable to G.This is joint work with Jingyin Huang.[-]