Distance in the Ellipticity Graph

Abstract

The ellipticity graph of a free group $F$ was defined by I. Kapovich and M. Lustig in order to study the outer automorphism group of $F$, which acts on this graph. The graph was constructed to be analogous to the curve complex of a surface. It is a bipartite graph, whose vertices are conjugacy classes of nontrivial elements of $F$ and equivalence classes of proper free product decompositions of the form $F=A*B$. A conjugacy class is joined by an edge to a free product decomposition $A*B$ whenever the conjugacy class has a representative in either $A$ or $B$. This paper uses Stallings subgroup $X$-digraphs and Whitehead automorphisms to construct algorithms that determine when the distance between two vertices of the ellipticity graph is two, for both types of vertices.