Walker's piecewise quasilinearity conjecture for scl in free products of finite cyclic groups

Fix a rational chain cc in the free group FnF_n. For o=(o1,o2,,on)\bm{o}=(o_1,o_2,\ldots,o_n) with oi2o_i\ge 2, let coc_{\bm{o}} be the image of cc under the natural homomorphism

FniZ/oiZ.F_n\to *_i\mathbb{Z}/o_i\mathbb{Z}.

Here scl(co){\rm scl}(c_{\bm{o}}) denotes stable commutator length in the resulting free product, and a function is piecewise quasilinear in 1/oi1/o_i if there are some pZ+p\in\mathbb{Z}_+ and a finite partition of Z2n\mathbb{Z}_{\ge 2}^n such that, on each piece and after fixing the congruence class of every oio_i modulo pp, it is linear in the variables 1/oi1/o_i.

Walker's conjecture. For any fixed chain cc in FnF_n, scl(co){\rm scl}(c_{\bm{o}}) is piecewise quasilinear in 1/oi1/o_i: there are some pZ+p\in\mathbb{Z}_+ and a finite partition of Z2n\mathbb{Z}_{\ge 2}^n such that on each piece, fixing any congruence class of each oio_i modulo pp, scl(co){\rm scl}(c_{\bm{o}}) is linear in 1/oi1/o_i.

The conjecture predicts the periodic behavior observed experimentally for stable commutator length in these families of free products; the source does not state a resolution, so its status remains open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Lvzhou Chen, “Scl in free products”, arXiv:1611.07463 (2017).

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