Groups acting freely on $\Lambda$-trees

Abstract

A group is called $\Lambda$-free if it has a free Lyndon length function in an ordered abelian group $\Lambda$, which is equivalent to having a free isometric action on a $\Lambda$-tree. A group has a regular free length function in $\Lambda$ if and only if it has a free isometric action on a $\Lambda$-tree so that all branch points belong to the orbit of the base point. In this paper we prove that every finitely presented $\Lambda$-free group $G$ can be embedded into a finitely presented group with a regular free length function in $\Lambda$ so that the length function on $G$ is preserved by the embedding. Next, we prove that every finitely presented group $\widetilde G$ with a regular free Lyndon length function in $\Lambda$ has a regular free Lyndon length function in ${\mathbb R}^n$ ordered lexicographically for an appropriate $n$ and can be obtained from a free group by a series of finitely many HNN-extensions in which associated subgroups are maximal abelian and length isomorphic.