Simple-stable and Bowditch representations of the four-punctured sphere group in Gromov-hyperbolic spaces

Abstract: In this paper, we study representations from the four-punctured sphere group into isometry groups of Gromov-hyperbolic spaces. We prove that the set of simple-stable representations (in analogy with Minsky's notion of primitive-stability) and the set of Bowditch representations (inspired by Bowditch's work on the free group of rank two, generalized by Tan, Wong and Zhang) are equal. Along the way, we study the combinatorics of simple closed curves on the four-punctured sphere and prove a result which quantifies the redundancy of subwords of certain given lengths within simple words.