The curve complex and covers via hyperbolic 3-manifolds

Rafi and Schleimer recently proved that the natural relation between curve complexes induced by a covering map between two surfaces is a quasi-isometric embedding. We offer another proof of this result using a distance estimate via hyperbolic 3-manifolds.Comment: 5 page

Invariance of coarse median spaces under relative hyperbolicity

We show that, for finitely generated groups, the property of admitting a coarse median structure is preserved under relative hyperbolicity

The panel on propulsion aerodynamics

Sources of discrepancies noted between propulsion aerodynamic characteristics as predicted from wind tunnel tests and as measured in flight are discussed. The variable Reynolds capability of the National Transonic Facility will provide a tool for understanding and quantifying uncertainties involved in extrapolating the corrected wind tunnel data from tunnel conditions to full scale flight conditions

Large-scale rank and rigidity of the Weil-Petersson metric

We study the large-scale geometry of Weil–Petersson space, that is, Teichmüller space equipped with theWeil–Petersson metric. We show that this admits a natural coarse median structure of a specific rank. Given that this is equal to the maximal dimension of a quasi-isometrically embedded euclidean space,we recover a result of Eskin,Masur and Rafi which gives the coarse rank of the space. We go on to show that, apart from finitely many cases, the Weil–Petersson spaces are quasi-isometrically distinct, and quasi-isometrically rigid. In particular, any quasi-isometry between such spaces is a bounded distance from an isometry. By a theorem of Brock,Weil–Petersson space is equivariantly quasi-isometric to the pants graph, so our results apply equally well to that space

Peripheral splittings of groups

We define the notion of a "peripheral splitting" of a group. This is essentially a representation of the group as the fundamental group of a bipartite graph of groups, where all the vertex groups of one colour are held fixed - the "peripheral subgroups". We develop the theory of such splittings and prove an accessibility result. The theory mainly applies to relatively hyperbolic groups with connected boundary, where the peripheral subgroups are precisely the maximal parabolic subgroups. We show that if such a group admits a non-trivial peripheral splitting, then its boundary has a global cut point. Moreover, the non-peripheral vertex groups of such a splitting are themselves relatively hyperbolic. These results, together with results from elsewhere, show that under modest constraints on the peripheral subgroups, the boundary of a relatively hyperbolic group is locally connected if it is connected. In retrospect, one further deduces that the set of global cut points in such a boundary has a simplicial treelike structure

From continua to R-trees

We show how to associate an R-tree to the set of cut points of a continuum. If X is a continuum without cut points we show how to associate an R-tree to the set of cut pairs of X.Comment: This is the version published by Algebraic & Geometric Topology on 1 November 200