Percolation on nonunimodular transitive graphs

We extend some of the fundamental results about percolation on unimodular nonamenable graphs to nonunimodular graphs. We show that they cannot have infinitely many infinite clusters at critical Bernoulli percolation. In the case of heavy clusters, this result has already been established, but it also follows from one of our results. We give a general necessary condition for nonunimodular graphs to have a phase with infinitely many heavy clusters. We present an invariant spanning tree with $p_c=1$ on some nonunimodular graph. Such trees cannot exist for nonamenable unimodular graphs. We show a new way of constructing nonunimodular graphs that have properties more peculiar than the ones previously known.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009117906000000494 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Finite and infinite quotients of discrete and indiscrete groups

These notes are devoted to lattices in products of trees and related topics. They provide an introduction to the construction, by M. Burger and S. Mozes, of examples of such lattices that are simple as abstract groups. Two features of that construction are emphasized: the relevance of non-discrete locally compact groups, and the two-step strategy in the proof of simplicity, addressing separately, and with completely different methods, the existence of finite and infinite quotients. A brief history of the quest for finitely generated and finitely presented infinite simple groups is also sketched. A comparison with Margulis' proof of Kneser's simplicity conjecture is discussed, and the relevance of the Classification of the Finite Simple Groups is pointed out. A final chapter is devoted to finite and infinite quotients of hyperbolic groups and their relation to the asymptotic properties of the finite simple groups. Numerous open problems are discussed along the way.Comment: Revised according to referee's report; definition of BMW-groups updated; more examples added in Section 4; new Proposition 5.1

Separable and tree-like asymptotic cones of groups

Using methods from nonstandard analysis, we will discuss which metric spaces can be realized as asymptotic cones. Applying the results we will find in the context of groups, we will prove that a group with "a few" separable asymptotic cones is virtually nilpotent, and we will classify the real trees appearing as asymptotic cones of (not necessarily hyperbolic) groups.Comment: The hypothesis of Theorem 1.2 had to be strengthene

JSJ-decompositions of finitely presented groups and complexes of groups

A JSJ-splitting of a group $G$ over a certain class of subgroups is a graph of groups decomposition of $G$ which describes all possible decompositions of $G$ as an amalgamated product or an HNN extension over subgroups lying in the given class. Such decompositions originated in 3-manifold topology. In this paper we generalize the JSJ-splitting constructions of Sela, Rips-Sela and Dunwoody-Sageev and we construct a JSJ-splitting for any finitely presented group with respect to the class of all slender subgroups along which the group splits. Our approach relies on Haefliger's theory of group actions on CAT$(0)$ spaces