Criterion for Cannon's Conjecture

The Cannon Conjecture from the geometric group theory asserts that a word hyperbolic group that acts effectively on its boundary, and whose boundary is homeomorphic to the 2-sphere, is isomorphic to a Kleinian group. We prove the following Criterion for Cannon's Conjecture: a hyperbolic group G (that acts effectively on its boundary) whose boundary is homeomorphic to the 2-sphere is isomorphic to a Kleinian group if and only if every two points in the boundary of G are separated by a quasi-convex surface subgroup. Thus, the Cannon's conjecture is reduced to showing that such a group contains "enough" quasi-convex surface subgroups. © 2013 Springer Basel.