Applications of stackings of graphs

A stacking is a lift of an immersion of graphs $A\to B$ to an embedding of $A$ into the product of $B$ with the real line; their existence relates to orderability properties of groups. I will describe how Louder and Wilton used them to prove Wise's "$w$-cycles" conjecture: given a primitive word $w$ in a free group $F$, and a subgroup $H < F$, the number of conjugates of $H$ which intersect $<w>$ nontrivially is at most rank($H$). I will also discuss applications of the result to questions of coherence, and possible extensions of it.