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We develop a method for proving the Boone--Higman Conjecture for groups acting on locally finite trees. As a consequence, we prove the Boone--Higman Conjecture for all Baumslag--Solitar groups and for all free(finite rank)-by-cyclic groups, solving it in two cases that have been raised explicitly by Belk, Bleak, Matucci and Zaremsky. We also illustrate that our method has applications beyond these cases and can for instance be used to prove the Boone--Higman Conjecture for the Leary--Minasyan groups., Comment: 28 pages; Comments welcome!

Subgroups of direct products of finitely many finitely generated free groups form a natural class that plays an important role in geometric group theory. Its members include fundamental examples, such as the Stallings-Bieri groups. This raises the problem of understanding their geometric invariants. We prove that finitely presented subgroups of direct products of three free groups, as well as subgroups of finiteness type $\mathcal{F}_{n-1}$ in a direct product of $n$ free groups, have Dehn function bounded above by $N^9$. This gives a positive answer to a question of Dison within these important subclasses and provides new insights in the context of Bridson's conjecture that finitely presented subgroups of direct products of free groups have polynomially bounded Dehn function. We also give the first precise computation of a superquadratic Dehn function of a finitely presented subgroup of a direct product of finitely many free groups: we show that the Bridson-Dison group is a subgroup of a direct product of three free groups with Dehn function $N^4$. To prove our results we generalise techniques for "pushing fillings" into normal subgroups and define a new invariant for obtaining optimal lower bounds on Dehn functions., Comment: 77 pages, 4 figures

Given a finitely presented group $G$ and a surjective homomorphism $G\to \mathbb{Z}^n$ with finitely presented kernel $K$, we give an upper bound on the Dehn function of $K$ in terms of an area-radius pair for $G$. As a consequence we obtain that finitely presented coabelian subgroups of hyperbolic groups have polynomially bounded Dehn function. This generalises results of Gersten and Short and our proof can be viewed as a quantified version of results from Renz' thesis on the second BNSR invariant., Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures

We determine the Dehn functions of central products of two families of filiform nilpotent Lie groups of arbitrary dimension with all simply connected nilpotent Lie groups with cyclic centre and strictly lower nilpotency class. We also determine the Dehn functions of all central products of nilpotent Lie groups of dimension at most $5$ with one-dimensional centre. This confirms a conjecture of Llosa Isenrich, Pallier and Tessera for these cases, providing further evidence that the Dehn functions of central products are often strictly lower than those of the factors. Our work generalises previous results of Llosa Isenrich, Pallier and Tessera and produces an uncountable family of nilpotent Lie groups without lattices whose Dehn functions are strictly lower than the ones of the associated Carnot-graded groups. A consequence of our main result is the existence of an infinite family of groups such that Cornulier's bounds on the $e$ for which there is an $O(r^e)$-bilipschitz equivalence between them and their Carnot-graded groups are asymptotically optimal, as the nilpotency class goes to infinity., Comment: 56 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. Comments welcome. v2: new Theorem VI and moved Appendix B.2 into a new Section 6

Recent constructions have shown that interesting behaviours can be observed in the finiteness properties of K\"ahler groups and their subgroups. In this work, we push this further and exhibit, for each integer $k$, new hyperbolic groups admiting surjective homomorphisms to $\mathbb{Z}$ and to $\mathbb{Z}^{2}$, whose kernel is of type $\mathscr{F}_{k}$ but not of type $\mathscr{F}_{k+1}$. By a fibre product construction, we also find examples of nonnormal subgroups of K\"ahler groups with exotic finiteness properties., Comment: 23 pages

For every $m\geq 2$ we produce an example of a non-hyperbolic finitely presented subgroup $H < G$ of a hyperbolic group $G$, which is the kernel of a surjective homomorphism $\phi: G\to \mathbb{Z}^m$. The examples we produce are of finiteness type $F_2$ and not $F_3$., Comment: 15 pages

We prove that in a cocompact complex hyperbolic arithmetic lattice $\Gamma < {\rm PU}(m,1)$ of the simplest type, deep enough finite index subgroups admit plenty of homomorphisms to $\mathbb{Z}$ with kernel of type $\mathscr{F}_{m-1}$ but not of type $\mathscr{F}_{m}$. This provides many finitely presented non-hyperbolic subgroups of hyperbolic groups and answers an old question of Brady. Our method also yields a proof of a special case of Singer's conjecture for aspherical K\"ahler manifolds., Comment: 22 pages

We give examples of hyperbolic groups which contain subgroups that are of type $\mathscr{F}_{3}$ but not of type $\mathscr{F}_{4}$. These groups are obtained by Dehn filling starting from a non-uniform lattice in ${\rm PO}(8,1)$ which was previously studied by Italiano, Martelli and Migliorini., Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure

We develop new methods for computing the precise Dehn functions of coabelian subgroups of direct products of groups, that is, subgroups which arise as kernels of homomorphisms from the direct product onto a free abelian group. These improve and generalise previous results by Carter and Forester on Dehn functions of level sets in products of simply connected cube complexes, by Bridson on Dehn functions of cocyclic groups and by Dison on Dehn functions of coabelian groups. We then provide several applications of our methods to subgroups of direct products of free groups, to groups with interesting geometric finiteness properties and to subgroups of direct products of right-angled Artin groups., Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures, v3: Minor corrections and improvements to the exposition. Final version

For every $k\geqslant 3$, we exhibit a simply connected $k$-nilpotent Lie group $N_k$ whose Dehn function behaves like $n^k$, while the Dehn function of its associated Carnot graded group $\mathsf{gr}(N_k)$ behaves like $n^{k+1}$. This property and its consequences allow us to reveal three new phenomena. First, since those groups have uniform lattices, this provides the first examples of pairs of finitely presented groups with bilipschitz asymptotic cones but with different Dehn functions. The second surprising feature of these groups is that for every even integer $k \geqslant 4$ the centralized Dehn function of $N_k$ behaves like $n^{k-1}$ and so has a different exponent than the Dehn function. This answers a question of Young. Finally, we turn our attention to sublinear bilipschitz equivalences (SBE). Introduced by Cornulier, these are maps between metric spaces inducing bi-Lipschitz homeomorphisms between their asymptotic cones. These can be seen as weakenings of quasiisometries where the additive error is replaced by a sublinearly growing function $v$. We show that a $v$-SBE between $N_k$ and $\mathsf{gr}(N_k)$ must satisfy $v(n)\succcurlyeq n^{1/(2k + 2)}$, strengthening the fact that those two groups are not quasiisometric. This is the first instance where an explicit lower bound is provided for a pair of SBE groups., Comment: 64 pages.v3: final version, minor corrections and improvements to the exposition

We study several geometric and group theoretical problems related to Kodaira fibrations, to more general families of Riemann surfaces, and to surface-by-surface groups. First we provide constraints on Kodaira fibrations that fiber in more than two distinct ways, addressing a question by Catanese and Salter about their existence. Then we show that if the fundamental group of a surface bundle over a surface is a ${\rm CAT}(0)$ group, the bundle must have injective monodromy (unless the monodromy has finite image). Finally, given a family of closed Riemann surfaces (of genus $\ge 2$) with injective monodromy $E\to B$ over a manifold $B$, we explain how to build a new family of Riemann surfaces with injective monodromy whose base is a finite cover of the total space $E$ and whose fibers have higher genus. We apply our construction to prove that the mapping class group of a once punctured surface virtually admits injective and irreducible morphisms into the mapping class group of a closed surface of higher genus., Comment: 32 pages, v3. The order of the sections has changed. This is the final version, to be published by Math. Annalen

We show that there is no uniform polynomial isoperimetric function for finitely presented subgroups of direct products of free groups, by producing a sequence of subgroups $G_r\leq F_2^{(1)} \times \dots \times F_2^{(r)}$ of direct products of 2-generated free groups with Dehn functions bounded below by $n^{r}$. The groups $G_r$ are obtained from the examples of non-coabelian subdirect products of free groups constructed by Bridson, Howie, Miller and Short. As a consequence we obtain that residually free groups do not admit a uniform polynomial isoperimetric function., Comment: 9 pages, v2: Improvements to the exposition and minor corrections. Final accepted version, to appear in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society

We address the problem of which functions can arise as Dehn functions of K\"ahler groups. We explain why there are examples of K\"ahler groups with linear, quadratic, and exponential Dehn function. We then proceed to show that there is an example of a K\"ahler group which has Dehn function bounded below by a cubic function and above by $n^6$. As a consequence we obtain that for a compact K\"ahler manifold having non-positive holomorphic bisectional curvature does not imply having quadratic Dehn function., Comment: 15 pages, V2: Minor corrections and improvements to the exposition. Final accepted version, to appear in Groups, Geometry, and Dynamics

We study smooth complex hypersurfaces in direct products of closed hyperbolic Riemann surfaces and give a classification in terms of their fundamental groups. This answers a question of Delzant and Gromov on subvarieties of products of Riemann surfaces in the smooth codimension one case. We also answer Delzant and Gromov's question of which subgroups of a direct product of surface groups are K\"ahler for two classes: subgroups of direct products of three surface groups; and subgroups arising as kernel of a homomorphism from the product of surface groups to $\mathbb{Z}^3$. These results will be a consequence of answering the more general question of which subgroups of a direct product of surface groups are the image of a homomorphism, which is induced by a holomorphic map, for the same two classes. This provides new constraints on K\"ahler groups., Comment: 14 pages, V3: Some changes to the exposition, particularly in the introduction. Also added some new references

We present a construction that produces infinite classes of K\"ahler groups that arise as fundamental groups of fibres of maps to higher dimensional tori. Following the work of Delzant and Gromov, there is great interest in knowing which subgroups of direct products of surface groups are K\"ahler. We apply our construction to obtain new classes of irreducible, coabelian K\"ahler subgroups of direct products of $r$ surface groups. These cover the full range of possible finiteness properties of irreducible subgroups of direct products of $r$ surface groups: For any $r\geq 3$ and $2\leq k \leq r-1$, our classes of subgroups contain K\"ahler groups that have a classifying space with finite $k$-skeleton while not having a classifying space with finitely many $(k+1)$-cells. We also address the converse question of finding constraints on K\"ahler subdirect products of surface groups and, more generally, on homomorphisms from K\"ahler groups to direct products of surface groups. We show that if a K\"ahler subdirect product of $r$ surface groups admits a classifying space with finite $k$-skeleton for $k>\frac{r}{2}$, then it is virtually the kernel of an epimorphism from a direct product of surface groups onto a free abelian group of even rank., Comment: 30 pages, V4: Some results were strengthened (in particular, Theorems 1.2 and 1.5 now include some additional consequences). Minor corrections and improvements to the exposition. Final accepted version, to appear in Geometry & Topology

We construct classes of K\"ahler groups that do not have finite classifying spaces and are not commensurable to subdirect products of surface groups. Each of these groups is the fundamental group of the generic fibre of a holomorphic map from a product of Kodaira fibrations onto an elliptic curve., Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure, V2: Minor corrections and improvements to the exposition. Final accepted version, to appear in the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society

We construct K\"ahler groups with arbitrary finiteness properties by mapping products of closed Riemann surfaces holomorphically onto an elliptic curve: for each $r\geq 3$, we obtain large classes of K\"ahler groups that have classifying spaces with finite $(r-1)$-skeleton but do not have classifying spaces with finitely many $r$-cells. We describe invariants which distinguish many of these groups. Our construction is inspired by examples of Dimca, Papadima and Suciu., Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures, V3: Minor corrections and improvements to the exposition. Final accepted version, to appear in the Annales de l'Institut Fourier

We construct the first explicit finite presentations for a family of K\"ahler groups with arbitrary finiteness properties, answering a question of Suciu., Comment: 19 pages, 1 figure. Final accepted version. To appear in the Journal of Algebra