Geometry & Topology

Event Information Trees, dendrites, and the Cannon-Thurston map
16:10 on Monday November 11, 2019
17:00 on Monday November 11, 2019
BA6183, Bahen Center, 40 St. George St.
Elizabeth Field

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

When 1 -> H -> G -> Q -> 1 is a short exact sequence of three word-hyperbolic groups, Mahan Mitra (Mj) has shown that the inclusion map from H to G extends continuously to a map between the Gromov boundaries of H and G. This boundary map is known as the Cannon-Thurston map. In this context, Mitra associates to every point z in the Gromov boundary of Q an ``ending lamination'' on H which consists of pairs of distinct points in the boundary of H. We prove that for each such z, the quotient of the Gromov boundary of H by the equivalence relation generated by this ending lamination is a dendrite, that is, a tree-like topological space. This result generalizes the work of Kapovich-Lustig and Dowdall-Kapovich-Taylor, who prove that in the case where H is a free group and Q is a convex cocompact purely atoroidal subgroup of Out(F_n), one can identify the resultant quotient space with a certain R-tree in the boundary of Culler-Vogtmann's Outer space.