BNS INVARIANTS AND ALGEBRAIC FIBRATIONS OF GROUP EXTENSIONS

Abstract

AbstractLet G be a finitely generated group that can be written as an extension $$ \begin{align*} 1 \longrightarrow K \stackrel{i}{\longrightarrow} G \stackrel{f}{\longrightarrow} \Gamma \longrightarrow 1 \end{align*} $$ where K is a finitely generated group. By a study of the Bieri–Neumann–Strebel (BNS) invariants we prove that if $b_1(G)> b_1(\Gamma ) > 0$ , then G algebraically fibres; that is, admits an epimorphism to $\Bbb {Z}$ with finitely generated kernel. An interesting case of this occurrence is when G is the fundamental group of a surface bundle over a surface $F \hookrightarrow X \rightarrow B$ with Albanese dimension $a(X) = 2$ . As an application, we show that if X has virtual Albanese dimension $va(X) = 2$ and base and fibre have genus greater that $1$ , G is noncoherent. This answers for a broad class of bundles a question of J. Hillman ([9, Question 11(4)]). Finally, we show that there exist surface bundles over a surface whose BNS invariants have a structure that differs from that of Kodaira fibrations, determined by T. Delzant.