Bushy Pseudocharacters
by
Jason Manning
University of California, Santa Barbara

A pseudocharacter on a group G is a real-valued function on G which is ``almost'' a homomorphism. Given a pseudocharacter f on a finitely presented group G, on can naturally associate a topological space E(f) on which G acts. This space E(f) may be thought of as a subset of the ends of a tree which is obtained as a quotient of the Cayley graph of G. If E(f) is sufficiently complicated, we say that f is bushy. In this case, the action on E(f) can be used to show that G contains a nonabelian free group.

Paper reference: arXiv:math.GR/0303380

Date received: March 12, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caja-15.