Boundaries of right-angled Coxeter groups with manifold nerves

All abstract reflection groups act geometrically on non-positively curved geodesic spaces. Their natural space at infinity, consisting of (bifurcating) infinite geodesic rays emanating from a fixed base point, is called a boundary of the group.We will present a condition on right-angled Coxeter groups under which they have topologically homogeneous boundaries. The condition is that they have a nerve which is a connected closed orientable PL manifold.In the event that the group is generated by the reflections of one of Davis’ exotic open contractible n-manifolds (n?4), the group will have a boundary which is a homogeneous cohomology manifold. This group boundary can then be used to equivariantly Z-compactify the Davis manifold.If the compactified manifold is doubled along the group boundary, one obtains a sphere if n?5. The system of reflections extends naturally to this sphere and can be augmented by a reflection whose fixed point set is the group boundary. It will be shown that the fixed point set of each extended original reflection on the thus formed sphere is a tame codimension-one sphere.     

Reflection groups of geodesic spaces and Coxeter groups

H.S.M. Coxeter showed that a group Γ is a finite reflection group of an Euclidean space if and only if Γ is a finite Coxeter group. In this paper, we define reflections of geodesic spaces in general, and we prove that Γ is a cocompact discrete reflection group of some geodesic space if and only if Γ is a Coxeter group.     

Coxeter groups are virtually special

In this paper we prove that every finitely generated Coxeter group has a finite index subgroup that is the fundamental group of a special cube complex. Some consequences include: Every f.g. Coxeter group is virtually a subgroup of a right-angled Coxeter group. Every word-hyperbolic Coxeter group has separable quasiconvex subgroups.     

Hyperbolic Coxeter groups of large dimension

We construct examples of Gromov hyperbolic Coxeter groups of arbitrarily large dimension. We also extend Vinbergs theorem to show that if a Gromov hyperbolic Coxeter group is a virtual Poincaré duality group of dimension n, then n 61.Coxeter groups acting on their associated complexes have been extremely useful source of examples and insight into nonpositively curved spaces over last several years. Negatively curved (or Gromov hyperbolic) Coxeter groups were much more elusive. In particular their existence in high dimensions was in doubt.In 1987 Gabor Moussong [M] conjectured that there is a universal bound on the virtual cohomological dimension of any Gromov hyperbolic Coxeter group. This question was also raised by Misha Gromov [G] (who thought that perhaps any construction of high dimensional negatively curved spaces requires nontrivial number theory in the guise of arithmetic groups in an essential way), and by Mladen Bestvina [B2].In the present paper we show that high dimensional Gromov hyperbolic Coxeter groups do exist, and we construct them by geometric or group theoretic but not arithmetic means.     

Subword complexes in Coxeter groups

Let (Π,Σ) be a Coxeter system. An ordered list of elements in Σ and an element in Π determine a subword complex, as introduced in Knutson and Miller (Ann. of Math. (2) (2003), to appear). Subword complexes are demonstrated here to be homeomorphic to balls or spheres, and their Hilbert series are shown to reflect combinatorial properties of reduced expressions in Coxeter groups. Two formulae for double Grothendieck polynomials, one of which appeared in Fomin and Kirillov (Proceedings of the Sixth Conference in Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics, DIMACS, 1994, pp. 183-190), are recovered in the context of simplicial topology for subword complexes. Some open questions related to subword complexes are presented.     

CAT(0) groups and Coxeter groups whose boundaries are scrambled sets

In this paper, we study CAT(0) groups and Coxeter groups whose boundaries are scrambled sets. Suppose that a group G acts geometrically (i.e. properly and cocompactly by isometries) on a proper CAT(0) space X. (Such a group G is called a CAT(0) group.) Then the group G acts by homeomorphisms on the boundary ∂X of X and we can define a metric d_∂X on the boundary ∂X. The boundary ∂X is called a scrambled set if, for any α,β∈∂X with α≠β, (1) lim sup{d_∂X(gα,gβ)∣g∈G}>0 and (2) lim inf{d_∂X(gα,gβ)∣g∈G}=0. We investigate when boundaries of CAT(0) groups (and Coxeter groups) are scrambled sets.     

A note on irreducible,infinite Coxeter groups

A new proof is given for the statement: For an irreducible, infinite Coxeter group (W,S)$(W,S)$ and w∈W$w\in W$, if wSw^-1=S${\mathit{wSw}}^{-1}=S$, then w=1$w=1$ (the identity element of W).     

A geometric characterization of Coxeter matroids

Coxeter matroids, introduced by Gelfand and Serganova, are combinatorial structures associated with any finite Coxeter group and its parabolic subgroup they include ordinary matroids as a specia case. A basic result in the subject is a geometric characterization of Coxeter matroids first stated by Gelfand and Serganova. This paper presents a self-contained, simple proof of a more general version of this geometric characterization.     

Embedding of two-colored right-angled Coxeter groups into products of two binary trees

We prove that every finitely generated 2-colored right-angled Coxeter group Γ can be quasi-isometrically embedded into the product of two binary trees. Moreover we show that the natural extension of this embedding to n-colored groups is not for every group quasi-isometric. Partially supported by Swiss National Science Foundation.     

Symmetric generation of Coxeter groups

We provide involutory symmetric generating sets of finitely generated Coxeter groups, fulfilling a suitable finiteness condition, which in particular is fulfilled in the finite, affine and compact hyperbolic cases.      

Special matchings and Coxeter groups

In the recent paper [Adv. Applied Math., 38 (2007), 210–226] it is proved that the special matchings of permutations generate a Coxeter group. In this paper we generalize this result to a class of Coxeter groups which includes many Weyl and affine Weyl groups. Our proofs are simpler, and shorter, than those in [loc. cit.] All authors are partially supported by EU grant HPRN-CT-2001-00272. Received: 30 October 2006     

A generalization of Coxeter groups,root systems,and Matsumoto’s theorem

The root systems appearing in the theory of Lie superalgebras and Nichols algebras admit a large symmetry extending properly the one coming from the Weyl group. Based on this observation we set up a general framework in which the symmetry object is a groupoid. We prove that in our context the groupoid is generated by simple reflections and Coxeter relations. In a broad sense this answers a question of Serganova. Our weak version of the exchange condition allows us to prove Matsumoto’s theorem. Therefore the word problem is solved for the groupoid.     

Continuous crystal and Duistermaat-Heckman measure for Coxeter groups

We introduce a notion of continuous crystal analogous, for general Coxeter groups, to the combinatorial crystals introduced by Kashiwara in representation theory of Lie algebras. We explore their main properties in the case of finite Coxeter groups, where we use a generalization of the Littelmann path model to show the existence of the crystals. We introduce a remarkable measure, analogous to the Duistermaat-Heckman measure, which we interpret in terms of Brownian motion. We also show that the Littelmann path operators can be derived from simple considerations on Sturm-Liouville equations.     

The separable transfer

A separable transfer map is defined for finite surjective morphisms from integral schemes to a Noetherian integral normal base, for both chain complexes of sheaves and presheaves of spectra. The spectrum level transfer is a map from a direct image paired with the classifying space of a translation groupoid, and taking values in the original presheaf. More traditional transfer maps are recovered from global sections of the stack associated to this groupoid. These constructions can be made in a big site model for the motivic stable category.     

Writing certain commutators as products of cubes in free groups

Let Cu(γ) be the minimal number of cubes required to express an element γ of a free group F. We establish a method for showing that certain equations do not have solutions in free groups. Using it, we find Cu(γ) for certain elements of the derived subgroup of F. If is the wreath product of F by the infinite cyclic group, we also show that every element of W′ is a product of at most one commutator and three cubes in W.