Limit trees for free group automorphisms: universality

Abstract

To any free group automorphism, we associate a universal (cone of) limit tree(s) with three defining properties: first, the tree has a minimal isometric action of the free group with trivial arc stabilizers; second, there is a unique expanding dilation of the tree that represents the free group automorphism; and finally, the loxodromic elements are exactly the elements that weakly limit to dominating attracting laminations under forward iteration by the automorphism. So the action on the tree detects the automorphism’s dominating exponential dynamics.

Keywords

• 20F65
• 20E05
• 20E08
• 20E36