Extremal densities and measures on groups and GG-spaces and their combinatorial applications

This text contains lecture notes of the course taught to Ph.D. students of Jagiellonian University in Krakow on 25-28 November, 2013.Comment: 18 page

Extensive amenability and an application to interval exchanges

Extensive amenability is a property of group actions which has recently been used as a tool to prove amenability of groups. We study this property and prove that it is preserved under a very general construction of semidirect products. As an application, we establish the amenability of all subgroups of the group IET of interval exchange transformations that have angular components of rational rank~${\leq 2}$. In addition, we obtain a reformulation of extensive amenability in terms of inverted orbits and use it to present a purely probabilistic proof that recurrent actions are extensively amenable. Finally, we study the triviality of the Poisson boundary for random walks on IET and show that there are subgroups $G <IET$ admitting no finitely supported measure with trivial boundary.Comment: 28 page

Banach spaces without minimal subspaces

We prove three new dichotomies for Banach spaces \`a la W.T. Gowers' dichotomies. The three dichotomies characterise respectively the spaces having no minimal subspaces, having no subsequentially minimal basic sequences, and having no subspaces crudely finitely representable in all of their subspaces. We subsequently use these results to make progress on Gowers' program of classifying Banach spaces by finding characteristic spaces present in every space. Also, the results are used to embed any partial order of size $\aleph_1$ into the subspaces of any space without a minimal subspace ordered by isomorphic embeddability

Thick metric spaces, relative hyperbolicity, and quasi-isometric rigidity

We study the geometry of nonrelatively hyperbolic groups. Generalizing a result of Schwartz, any quasi-isometric image of a non-relatively hyperbolic space in a relatively hyperbolic space is contained in a bounded neighborhood of a single peripheral subgroup. This implies that a group being relatively hyperbolic with nonrelatively hyperbolic peripheral subgroups is a quasi-isometry invariant. As an application, Artin groups are relatively hyperbolic if and only if freely decomposable. We also introduce a new quasi-isometry invariant of metric spaces called metrically thick, which is sufficient for a metric space to be nonhyperbolic relative to any nontrivial collection of subsets. Thick finitely generated groups include: mapping class groups of most surfaces; outer automorphism groups of most free groups; certain Artin groups; and others. Nonuniform lattices in higher rank semisimple Lie groups are thick and hence nonrelatively hyperbolic, in contrast with rank one which provided the motivating examples of relatively hyperbolic groups. Mapping class groups are the first examples of nonrelatively hyperbolic groups having cut points in any asymptotic cone, resolving several questions of Drutu and Sapir about the structure of relatively hyperbolic groups. Outside of group theory, Teichmuller spaces for surfaces of sufficiently large complexity are thick with respect to the Weil-Peterson metric, in contrast with Brock--Farb's hyperbolicity result in low complexity.Comment: To appear in Mathematische Annale

Invariant means for the wobbling group

Given a metric space $(X,d)$, the wobbling group of $X$ is the group of bijections $g:X\rightarrow X$ satisfying $\sup\limits_{x\in X} d(g(x),x)<\infty$. We study algebraic and analytic properties of $W(X)$ in relation with the metric space structure of $X$, such as amenability of the action of the lamplighter group $\bigoplus_{X} \mathbf Z/2\mathbf Z \rtimes W(X)$ on $\bigoplus_{X} \mathbf Z/2\mathbf Z$ and property (T).Comment: 8 pages. v3: final version, with new presentation; to appear in the Bulletin of the BM

The Solecki submeasures and densities on groups

We introduce the Solecki submeasure $\sigma(A)=\inf_F\sup_{x,y\in G}|F\cap xAy|/|F|$ and its left and right modifications on a group $G$, and study the interplay between the Solecki submeasure and the Haar measure on compact topological groups. Also we show that the right Solecki density on a countable amenable group coincides with the upper Banach density $d^*$ which allows us to generalize some fundamental results of Bogoliuboff, Folner, Cotlar and Ricabarra, Ellis and Keynes about difference sets and Jin, Beiglbock, Bergelson and Fish about the sumsets to the class of all amenable groups.Comment: 34 page

Asymptotic Dimension

The asymptotic dimension theory was founded by Gromov in the early 90s. In this paper we give a survey of its recent history where we emphasize two of its features: an analogy with the dimension theory of compact metric spaces and applications to the theory of discrete groups.Comment: Added some remarks about coarse equivalence of finitely generated groups