Alexander and Thurston norms, and the Bieri–Neumann–Strebel invariants for free-by-cyclic groups

Funke, Florian; Kielak, Dawid

doi:10.2140/gt.2018.22.2647

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Alexander and Thurston norms, and the Bieri–Neumann–Strebel invariants for free-by-cyclic groups

Florian Funke and Dawid Kielak

Geometry & Topology 22 (2018) 2647–2696

DOI: 10.2140/gt.2018.22.2647

Abstract

We investigate Friedl and Lück’s universal $L^{2}$ –torsion for descending HNN extensions of finitely generated free groups, and so in particular for $F_{n}$ -by- $ℤ$ groups. This invariant induces a seminorm on the first cohomology of the group which is an analogue of the Thurston norm for $3$ –manifold groups.

We prove that this Thurston seminorm is an upper bound for the Alexander seminorm defined by McMullen, as well as for the higher Alexander seminorms defined by Harvey. The same inequalities are known to hold for $3$ –manifold groups.

We also prove that the Newton polytopes of the universal $L^{2}$ –torsion of a descending HNN extension of $F_{2}$ locally determine the Bieri–Neumann–Strebel invariant of the group. We give an explicit means of computing the BNS invariant for such groups. As a corollary, we prove that the Bieri–Neumann–Strebel invariant of a descending HNN extension of $F_{2}$ has finitely many connected components.

When the HNN extension is taken over $F_{n}$ along a polynomially growing automorphism with unipotent image in $GL (n, ℤ)$ , we show that the Newton polytope of the universal $L^{2}$ –torsion and the BNS invariant completely determine one another. We also show that in this case the Alexander norm, its higher incarnations and the Thurston norm all coincide.

Keywords

free-by-cyclic groups, ascending HNN extensions of free groups, BNS invariants, Thurston norm, Alexander norm

Mathematical Subject Classification 2010

Primary: 20F65

Secondary: 16S85, 20E06

References

Publication

Received: 31 May 2016

Revised: 26 October 2017

Accepted: 14 January 2018

Published: 1 June 2018

Proposed: Jean-Pierre Otal

Seconded: Martin Bridson, Walter Neumann

Authors

Florian Funke
Mathematisches Institut Universität Bonn Bonn Germany
https://www.math.uni-bonn.de/people/ffunke/
Dawid Kielak
Fakultät für Mathematik Universität Bielefeld Bielefeld Germany
https://www.math.uni-bielefeld.de/~dkielak

Volume 22, issue 5 (2018)