GEOMETRICITY AND POLYGONALITY IN FREE GROUPS

Gordon and Wilton recently proved that the double D of a free group F amalgamated along a cyclic subgroup C of F contains a surface group if a generator w of C satisfies a certain 3-manifold theoretic condition, called virtually geometricity. Wilton and the author defined the polygonality of w which also guarantees the existence of a surface group in D. In this paper, virtual geometricity is shown to imply polygonality up to descending to a finite-index subgroup of F. That the converse does not hold will follow from an example formerly considered by Manning.