Involutions of negatively curved groups with wild boundary behavior

Abstract

We consider pairs (X,Y) where X is a compact, locally CAT(-1) space, and Y is a totally geodesic subspace. The inclusion induces an embedding of the boundaries at infinity of the universal covers; we focus on the case where these are spheres whose dimensions differ by 2. We show that if the embedding is tame, then it is unknotted. We give examples of pairs for which the embedding is knotted (and can be realized as the fixed point set of an involution). We also provide a criterion for knottedness of tame codimension two spheres in high dimensional (>5) spheres. Corresponding results for delta-hyperbolic groups are also discussed. Some corollaries give new results even in the Riemannian manifold case.