In this paper we consider two piecewise Riemannian metrics defined on the Culler–Vogtmann outer space which we call the entropy metric and the pressure metric. As a result of work of McMullen, these metrics can be seen as analogs of the Weil–Petersson metric on the Teichmüller space of a closed surface. We show that while the geometric analysis of these metrics is similar to that of the Weil–Petersson metric, from the point of view of geometric group theory, these metrics behave very differently than the Weil–Petersson metric. Specifically, we show that when the rank r is at least 4, the action of $\operatorname {\mathrm {Out}}(\mathbb {F}_r)$ on the completion of the Culler–Vogtmann outer space using the entropy metric has a fixed point. A similar statement also holds for the pressure metric.

Given finite sets of cyclic words $\{u_1,\dots,u_k\}$ and $\{v_1,\dots,v_k\}$ in a finitely generated free group $F$ and two finite groups $A$ and $B$ of outer automorphisms of $F$, we produce an algorithm to decide whether there is an automorphism which conjugates $A$ to $B$ and takes $u_i$ to $v_i$ for each $i$. If $A$ and $B$ are trivial, this is the classic algorithm due to Whitehead. We use this algorithm together with Cohen and Lustig’s solution to the conjugacy problem for Dehn twist automorphisms of $F$ to solve the conjugacy problem for outer automorphisms which have a power which is a Dehn twist. This settles the conjugacy problem for all automorphisms of $F$ which have linear growth.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 20F32. Secondary 57M07