Free quotients of fundamental groups of smooth quasi-projective varieties

Abstract

We consider the structure of classes of curves on a projective simply connected surface for which fundamental groups of the complements admit free quotients having rank greater than one with irreducible components belonging to a selected subset the effective cone of the surface. In particular we show a finiteness result for such classes if the ranks of free quotients of the fundamental groups with components in the subset of effective cone are sufficiently large.