The fundamental groups of subsets of closed surfaces inject into their first shape groups.
A survey of splitting theorems for abstract groups and their applications. Topics covered include preliminaries, early results, Bass-Serre theory, the structure of G-trees, Serre's applications to SL2 and length functions. Stallings' theorem, results about accessibility and bounds for splittability. Duality groups and pairs; results of Eckmann and collaborators on PD2 groups. Relative ends, the JSJ theorems and the splitting results of Kropholler and Roller on PDn groups. Notions of quasi-isometry,...
We provide a solution to the isomorphism problem for torsion-free relatively hyperbolic groups with abelian parabolics. As special cases we recover solutions to the isomorphism problem for: (i) torsion-free hyperbolic groups (Sela, [60] and unpublished); and (ii) finitely generated fully residually free groups (Bumagin, Kharlampovich and Miasnikov [14]). We also give a solution to the homeomorphism problem for finite volume hyperbolic -manifolds, for . In the course of the proof of the main result,...