Contracting Boundary of a Cusped Space

Abstract

Let $G$ be a finitely generated group. Cashen and Mackay proved that if the contracting boundary of $G$ with the topology of fellow travelling quasi-geodesics is compact then $G$ is a hyperbolic group. Let $\mathcal{H}$ be a finite collection of finitely generated infinite index subgroups of $G$. Let $G^h$ be the cusped space obtained by attaching combinatorial horoballs to each left cosets of elements of $\mathcal{H}$. In this article, we prove that if the combinatorial horoballs are contracting and $G^h$ has compact contracting boundary then $G$ is hyperbolic relative to $\mathcal{H}$.

Applications, Examples added, exposition improved