Nonpositively curved 2-complexes with isolated flats

Abstract

We introduce the class of nonpositively curved 2-complexes with the Isolated Flats Property. These 2-complexes are, in a sense, hyperbolic relative to their flats. More precisely, we show that several important properties of Gromov-hyperbolic spaces hold `relative to flats' in nonpositively curved 2-complexes with the Isolated Flats Property. We introduce the Relatively Thin Triangle Property, which states roughly that the fat part of a geodesic triangle lies near a single flat. We also introduce the Relative Fellow Traveller Property, which states that pairs of quasigeodesics with common endpoints fellow travel relative to flats, in a suitable sense. The main result of this paper states that in the setting of CAT(0) 2-complexes, the Isolated Flats Property is equivalent to the Relatively Thin Triangle Property and is also equivalent to the Relative Fellow Traveller Property.