Stable commutator length in amalgamated free products

Abstract

We show that stable commutator length is rational on free products of free abelian groups amalgamated over ℤk, a class of groups containing the fundamental groups of all torus knot complements. We consider a geometric model for these groups and parametrize all surfaces with specified boundary mapping to this space. Using this work we provide a topological algorithm to compute stable commutator length in these groups. Further, we use the methods developed to show that in free products of cyclic groups the stable commutator length of a fixed word varies quasirationally in the orders of the free factors.