Paper detail

Quasiflats in hierarchically hyperbolic spaces

The rank of a hierarchically hyperbolic space is the maximal number of unbounded factors in a standard product region. For hierarchically hyperbolic groups, this coincides with the maximal dimension of a quasiflat. Examples for which the rank coincides with familiar quantities include: the dimension of maximal Dehn twist flats for mapping class groups, the maximal rank of a free abelian subgroup for right-angled Coxeter and Artin groups, and, for the Weil--Petersson metric, the rank is the integer part of half the complex dimension of Teichmüller space. We prove that any quasiflat of dimension equal to the rank lies within finite distance of a union of standard orthants (under a mild condition satisfied by all natural examples). This resolves outstanding conjectures when applied to various examples. For mapping class group, we verify a conjecture of Farb; for Teichmüller space we answer a question of Brock; for CAT(0) cubical groups, we handle special cases including right-angled Coxeter groups. An important ingredient in the proof is that the hull of any finite set in an HHS is quasi-isometric to a CAT(0) cube complex of dimension bounded by the rank. We deduce a number of applications. For instance, we show that any quasi-isometry between HHSs induces a quasi-isometry between certain simpler HHSs. This allows one, for example, to distinguish quasi-isometry classes of right-angled Artin/Coxeter groups. Another application is to quasi-isometric rigidity. Our tools in many cases allow one to reduce the problem of quasi-isometric rigidity for a given hierarchically hyperbolic group to a combinatorial problem. We give a new proof of quasi-isometric rigidity of mapping class groups, which, given our general quasiflats theorem, uses simpler combinatorial arguments than in previous proofs.