Blowing up and down compacta with geometrically finite convergence actions of a group

Abstract: We consider two compacta with minimal non-elementary convergence actions of a countable group. When there exists an equivariant continuous map from one to the other, we call the first a blow-up of the second and the second a blow-down of the first. When both actions are geometrically finite, it is shown that one is a blow-up of the other if and only if each parabolic subgroup with respect to the first is parabolic with respect to the second. As an application, for each compactum with a geometrically finite convergence action, we construct its blow-downs with convergence actions which are not geometrically finite.