Limit groups and groups acting freely on ^n-trees

07/21/2003

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by   Vincent Guirardel, et al.

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We give a simple proof of the finite presentation of Sela's limit groups by using free actions on ^n-trees. We first prove that Sela's limit groups do have a free action on an ^n-tree. We then prove that a finitely generated group having a free action on an ^n-tree can be obtained from free abelian groups and surface groups by a finite sequence of free products and amalgamations over cyclic groups. As a corollary, such a group is finitely presented, has a finite classifying space, its abelian subgroups are finitely generated and contains only finitely many conjugacy classes of non-cyclic maximal abelian subgroups.