Large quotients of group actions with a contracting element

Abstract

For any proper action of a non-elementary group $G$ on a proper geodesic metric space, we show that if $G$ contains a contracting element, then there exists a sequence of proper quotient groups whose growth rate tends to the growth rate of $G$. Similar statements are obtained for a product of proper actions with contracting elements. The tools involved in this paper include the extension lemma for the construction of large tree, the theory of rotating families developed by F. Dahmani, V. Guirardel and D. Osin, and the construction of a quasi-tree of metric spaces introduced by M. Bestvina, K. Bromberg and K. Fujiwara. Several applications are given to CAT(0) groups and mapping class groups.