Splittings and the asymptotic topology of the lamplighter group

It is known that splittings of finitely presented groups over 2-ended groups can be characterized geometrically. We show that this characterization does not extend to all finitely generated groups. Answering a question of Kleiner we show that the Cayley graph of the lamplighter group is coarsely separated by quasi-circles.Comment: 11 page

Cheeger constants of surfaces and isoperimetric inequalities

We show that the Cheeger constant of compact surfaces is bounded by a function of the area. We apply this to isoperimetric profiles of bounded genus non-compact surfaces, to show that if their isoperimetric profile grows faster than $\sqrt t$, then it grows at least as fast as a linear function. This generalizes a result of Gromov for simply connected surfaces. We study the isoperimetric problem in dimension 3. We show that if the filling volume function in dimension 2 is Euclidean, while in dimension 3 is sub-Euclidean and there is a $g$ such that minimizers in dimension 3 have genus at most $g$, then the filling function in dimension 3 is `almost' linear.Comment: 28 page

Group splittings and asymptotic topology

It is a consequence of the theorem of Stallings on groups with many ends that splittings over finite groups are preserved by quasi-isometries. In this paper we use asymptotic topology to show that group splittings are preserved by quasi-isometries in many cases. Roughly speaking we show that splittings are preserved under quasi-isometries when the vertex groups are fundamental groups of aspherical manifolds (or more generally `coarse PD(n)-groups') and the edge groups are `smaller' than the vertex groups.Comment: 14 page

Growth and isoperimetric profile of planar graphs

Let G be a planar graph such that the volume function of G satisfies V(2n)< CV(n) for some constant C > 0. Then for every vertex v of G and integer n, there is a domain \Omega such that B(v,n) \subset \Omega, \Omega \subset B(v, 6n) and the size of the boundary of \Omega is at most order n.Comment: 8 page

A surface with discontinuous isoperimetric profile and expander manifolds

We construct sequences of `expander manifolds' and we use them to show that there is a complete connected 2-dimensional Riemannian manifold with discontinuous isoperimetric profile, answering a question of Nardulli and Pansu. Using expander manifolds in dimension 3 we show that for any $\epsilon , M>0$ there is a Riemannian 3-sphere $S$ of volume 1, such that any (not necessarily connected) surface separating $S$ in two regions of volume greater than $\epsilon$, has area greater than $M$.Comment: 15 pages, this paper merged with arXiv:1803.07375 (2018), to appear in Geom. Dedicat

A cactus theorem for end cuts

Dinits-Karzanov-Lomonosov showed that it is possible to encode all minimal edge cuts of a graph by a tree-like structure called a cactus. We show here that minimal edge cuts separating ends of the graph rather than vertices can be `encoded' also by a cactus. We apply our methods to finite graphs as well and we show that several types of cuts can be encoded by cacti.Comment: 19 page

Simply connected homogeneous continua are not separated by arcs

We show that locally connected, simply connected homogeneous continua are not separated by arcs. We ask several questions about homogeneous continua which are inspired by analogous questions in geometric group theory.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure

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