Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2000
Troels Jørgensen conjectured that the algebraic and geometric limits of an algebraically convergent sequence of isomorphic Kleinian groups agree if there are no new parabolics in the algebraic limit. We prove that this conjecture holds in ‘most’ cases. In particular, we show that it holds when the domain of discontinuity of the algebraic limit of such a sequence is non-empty (see Theorem 3.1). We further show, with the same assumptions, that the limit sets of the groups in the sequence converge to the limit set of the algebraic limit. As a corollary, we verify the conjecture for finitely generated Kleinian groups which are not (non-trivial) free products of surface groups and infinite cyclic groups (see Corollary 3.3). These results are extensions of similar results for purely loxodromic groups which can be found in [4]. Thurston [32] previously established these results in the case when the Kleinian groups are freely indecomposable (see also Ohshika [24, 25, 27]). Using different techniques from ours, Ohshika [26] has proven versions of these results for purely loxodromic function groups.