Ping-pong in Hadamard manifolds

Abstract

In this paper, we prove a quantitative version of the Tits alternative for negatively pinched manifolds $X$. Precisely, we prove that a nonelementary discrete isometry subgroup of $\mathrm{Isom}(X)$ generated by two non-elliptic isometries $g$, $f$ contains a free subgroup of rank $2$ generated by isometries $f^N,h$ of uniformly bounded word length. Furthermore, we show that this free subgroup is convex-cocompact when $f$ is hyperbolic.

20 pages, 5 figures