Joseph Maher

We consider three kinds of quotients of the curve complex, which are obtained by coning off uniformly quasiconvex subspaces: symmetric curve sets, non-maximal train track sets, and compression body disc sets. We show that the actions of the mapping class group on those quotients are strongly weakly properly discontinuously (WPD), which implies that the actions are non-elementary and those quotients are of infinite diameter.

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We prove that for the harmonic measure associated to a random walk on Out$(F_r)$ satisfying some mild conditions, a typical tree in the boundary of Outer space is trivalent and nongeometric. This answers a question of M. Bestvina.

We study random walks on groups of isometries of non-proper delta-hyperbolic spaces under the assumption that at least one element in the group satisfies Bestvina-Fujiwara's WPD condition. We show that in this case typical elements are WPD, and the Poisson boundary coincides with the Gromov boundary. Moreover, we show that the random walk satisfies a form of asymptotic acylindricality, and we use this to show that the normal closure of random elements yields almost surely infinitely many different normal subgroups. Moreover, the probability that the normal closure is free tends to 1 if and only if the maximal normal subgroup coincides with the center of the group. We apply such techniques to the Cremona group, thus obtaining that the dynamical degree of random Cremona transformations grows exponentially fast, producing many different normal subgroups, and identifying the Poisson boundary. We also give a new identification of the Poisson boundary of Out(F_n). Our methods give bounds on the rates of convergence for these results.

We consider three kinds of quotients of the curve complex which are obtained by coning off uniformly quasi-convex subspaces: symmetric curve sets, non-maximal train track sets, and compression body disc sets. We show that the actions of the mapping class group on those quotients are strongly WPD, which implies that the actions are non-elementary and those quotients are of infinite diameter.

We show that the compression body graph has infinite diameter.

We consider random walks on the mapping class group that have finite first moment with respect to the word metric, whose support generates a non-elementary subgroup and contains a pseudo-Anosov map whose invariant Teichmüller geodesic is in the principal stratum of quadratic differentials. We show that a Teichmüller geodesic typical with respect to the harmonic measure for such random walks, is recurrent to the thick part of the principal stratum. As a consequence, the vertical foliation of such a random Teichmüller geodesic has no saddle connections.