Hyperbolic Graphs of Surface Groups

Honglin Min

Published 2008-01-24, updated 2009-08-14Version 2

We give a sufficient condition under which the fundamental group of a reglued graph of surfaces is hyperbolic. A reglued graph of surfaces is constructed by cutting a fixed graph of surfaces along the edge surfaces, then regluing by pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms of the edge surfaces. By carefully choosing the regluing homeomorphism, we construct an example of such a reglued graph of surfaces, whose fundamental group is not abstractly commensurate to any surface-by-free group, i.e., which is different from all the examples given in Mosher's paper 'A hyperbolic-by-hyperbolic hyperbolic group'.