Boundaries and JSJ decompositions of CAT(0)-groups

Panos Papasoglu, Eric Swenson

Published 2007-01-22, updated 2008-12-01Version 2

Let G be a one-ended group acting discretely and co-compactly on a CAT(0) space X. We show that the boundary of X has no cut points and that one can detect splittings of $G$ over two-ended groups and recover its JSJ decomposition from the boundary. We show that any discrete action of a group G on a CAT(0) space X satisfies a convergence type property. This is used in the proof of the results above but it is also of independent interest. In particular, if G acts co-compactly on X, then one obtains as a Corollary that if the Tits diameter of the boundary of X is bigger than $\frac {3\pi} 2$ then it is infinite and G contains a free subgroup of rank 2.