Relatively hyperbolic group

In mathematics, the concept of a relatively hyperbolic group is an important generalization of the geometric group theory concept of a hyperbolic group. The motivating examples of relatively hyperbolic groups are the fundamental groups of complete noncompact hyperbolic manifolds of finite volume. A group G is relatively hyperbolic with respect to a subgroup H if, after contracting the Cayley graph of G along H-cosets, the resulting graph equipped with the usual graph metric becomes a δ-hyperbolic space and, moreover, it satisfies a technical condition which implies that quasi-geodesics with common endpoints travel through approximately the same collection of cosets and enter and exit these cosets in approximately the same place. Given a finitely generated group G with Cayley graph Γ(G) equipped with the path metric and a subgroup H of G, one can construct the coned off Cayley graph as follows: For each left coset gH, add a vertex v(gH) to the Cayley graph Γ(G) and for each element x of gH, add an edge e(x) of length 1/2 from x to the vertex v(gH). This results in a metric space that may not be proper (i.e. closed balls need not be compact). The definition of a relatively hyperbolic group, as formulated by Bowditch goes as follows. A group G is said to be hyperbolic relative to a subgroup H if the coned off Cayley graph has the properties: It is δ-hyperbolic and it is fine: for each integer L, every edge belongs to only finitely many simple cycles of length L. If only the first condition holds then the group G is said to be weakly relatively hyperbolic with respect to H. The definition of the coned off Cayley graph can be generalized to the case of a collection of subgroups and yields the corresponding notion of relative hyperbolicity. A group G which contains no collection of subgroups with respect to which it is relatively hyperbolic is said to be a non relatively hyperbolic group. If a group G is relatively hyperbolic with respect to a hyperbolic group H, then G itself is hyperbolic.