Quasi-actions on trees and Property (QFA)

We prove some general results about quasi-actions on trees and define Property (QFA), which is analogous to Serre's Property (FA), but in the coarse setting. This property is shown to hold for a class of groups, including $SL(n,\Z)$ for $n\geq 3$. We also give a way of thinking about Property (QFA) by breaking it down into statements about particular classes of trees.Comment: 23 pages, Appendix on "Boundedly generated groups with pseudocharacter(s)" by Nicolas Monod and Bertrand R\'emy. References have been updated. Some statements in Section 4 have been modifie

Dehn filling in relatively hyperbolic groups

We introduce a number of new tools for the study of relatively hyperbolic groups. First, given a relatively hyperbolic group G, we construct a nice combinatorial Gromov hyperbolic model space acted on properly by G, which reflects the relative hyperbolicity of G in many natural ways. Second, we construct two useful bicombings on this space. The first of these, "preferred paths", is combinatorial in nature and allows us to define the second, a relatively hyperbolic version of a construction of Mineyev. As an application, we prove a group-theoretic analog of the Gromov-Thurston 2\pi Theorem in the context of relatively hyperbolic groups.Comment: 83 pages. v2: An improved version of preferred paths is given, in which preferred triangles no longer need feet. v3: Fixed several small errors pointed out by the referee, and repaired several broken figures. v4: corrected definition 2.38. This is very close to the published versio

An alternate proof of Wise's Malnormal Special Quotient Theorem

We give an alternate proof of Wise's Malnormal Special Quotient Theorem (MSQT), avoiding cubical small cancellation theory. We also show how to deduce Wise's Quasiconvex Hierarchy Theorem from the MSQT and theorems of Hsu--Wise and Haglund--Wise.Comment: 42 pages, 10 figures. Version 2 contains minor changes, addressing referee comments. To appear in Forum of Mathematics, P