Poisson boundary of groups acting on real trees

Abstract

We give a geometric description of the Poisson boundaries of certain extensions of free and hyperbolic groups. In particular, we get a full description of the Poisson boundaries of free-by-cyclic groups. We rely upon the description of Poisson boundaries by means of a topological compactification as developed by Kaimanovich. All the groups studied here share the property of admitting a sufficiently complicated action on some real tree.