Generalized Graph Manifolds, Residually Finiteness, and the Singer Conjecture

We prove the Singer conjecture for extended graph manifolds and pure complex-hyperbolic higher graph manifolds with residually finite fundamental groups. In real dimension three, where a result of Hempel ensures that the fundamental group is always residually finite, we then provide a Price type inequality proof of a well-known result of Lott and Lueck. Finally, we give several classes of higher graph manifolds which do indeed have residually finite fundamental groups.

Homomorphisms to 3-manifold groups

We prove foundational results about the set of homomorphisms from a finitely generated group to the collection of all fundamental groups of compact 3-manifolds and answer questions of Reid-Wang-Zhou and Agol-Liu.

Persistent homology detects curvature

In topological data analysis, persistent homology is used to study the shape of data. Persistent homology computations are completely characterized by a set of intervals called a bar code. It is often said that the long intervals represent the topological signal and the short intervals represent noise. We give evidence to dispute this thesis, showing that the short intervals encode geometric information. Specifically, we prove that persistent homology detects the curvature of disks from which points have been sampled. We describe a general computational framework for solving inverse problems using the average persistence landscape, a continuous mapping from metric spaces with a probability measure to a Hilbert space. In the present application, the average persistence landscapes of points sampled from disks of constant curvature results in a path in this Hilbert space which may be learned using standard tools from statistical and machine learning.

Counting Conjugacy Classes in $Out(F_N)$

We show that if a f.g. group $G$ has a non-elementary WPD action on a hyperbolic metric space $X$, then the number of $G$-conjugacy classes of $X$-loxodromic elements of $G$ coming from a ball of radius $R$ in the Cayley graph of $G$ grows exponentially in $R$. As an application we prove that for $Nge 3$ the number of distinct $Out(F_N)$-conjugacy classes of fully irreducibles $phi$ from an $R$-ball in the Cayley graph of $Out(F_N)$ with $loglambda(phi)$ on the order of $R$ grows exponentially in $R$.

Homomorphisms to acylindrically hyperbolic groups I: Equationally noetherian groups and families

We study the set of homomorphisms from a fixed finitely generated group into a family of groups which are `uniformly acylindrically hyperbolic. Our main results reduce this study to sets of homomorphisms which do not diverge in an appropriate sense. As an application, we prove that any relatively hyperbolic group with equationally noetherian peripheral subgroups is itself equationally noetherian.

Abelian splittings of Right-Angled Artin Groups

We characterize when (and how) a Right-Angled Artin group splits nontrivially over an abelian subgroup.

A Cartan-Hadamard type result for relatively hyperbolic groups

In this article, we prove that if a finitely presented group has an asymptotic cone which is tree-graded with respect to a precise set of pieces then it is relatively hyperbolic. This answers a question of M. Sapir.