14 pages Corrected proof of Corollary 1.4. Various other corrections made following referee report and comments made by thesis examiner. Appendix added giving a proof of a theorem by Gerasimov
We consider a finitely generated virtually abelian group $G$ acting properly and without inversions on a CAT(0) cube complex $X$. We prove that $G$ stabilizes a finite dimensional CAT(0) subcomplex $Y \subseteq X$ that is isometrically embedded in the combinatorial metric. Moreover, we show that $Y$ is a product of finitely many quasilines. The result represents a higher dimensional generalization of Haglund's axis theorem.
In this short note, we show that a group acting geometrically on a CAT(0) cube complex with virtually abelian hyperplane-stabilisers must decompose virtually as a free product of free abelian groups and surface groups.
We investigate the virtual specialness of a compact cube complex $X$ that splits as a graph of nonpositively curved cube complexes. We prove virtual specialness of $X$ when each vertex space of $X$ has word-hyperbolic $π_1$ and $π_1X$ has ``finite stature'' relative to its edge groups. The results generalize the motivating case when tree $\times$ tree lattices are virtual products.
In this article, we associate to isometries of CAT(0) cube complexes specific subspaces, referred to as \emph{median sets}, which play a similar role as minimising sets of semisimple isometries in CAT(0) spaces. Various applications are deduced, including a cubulation of centralisers, a splitting theorem, a proof that Dehn twists in mapping class groups must be elliptic for every action on a CAT(0) cube complex, a cubical version of the flat torus theorem, and a structural theorem about polycyclic groups acting on CAT(0) cube complexes.
Rips and Sela introduced the notion of globally stable cylinders and asked if all Gromov hyperbolic groups admit such. We prove that hyperbolic cubulated groups admit globally stable cylinders.
Central to the theory of special cube complexes is Haglund and Wise's construction of the canonical completion and retraction, which enables one to build finite covers of special cube complexes in a highly controlled manner. In this paper we give a new interpretation of this construction using what we call imitator homomorphisms. This provides fresh insight into the construction and enables us to prove various new results about finite covers of special cube complexes -- most of which generalise existing theorems of Haglund--Wise to the non-hyperbolic setting. In particular, we prove a convex v…
This paper is a survey dedicated to the following question: given a group acting on some CAT(0) cube complex, how to exploit this action to determine whether or not the group is Gromov / relatively / acylindrically hyperbolic? As much as possible, the different criteria we mention are illustrated by applications. We also propose a model for universal acylindrical actions of cubulable groups and give a few applications to Morse, stable and hyperbolically embedded subgroups.
We deduce from Sageev's results that whenever a group acts locally elliptically on a finite dimensional CAT(0) cube complex, then it must fix a point. As an application, we give an example of a group G such that G does not have property (T), but G and all its finitely generated subgroups can not act without a fixed point on a finite dimensional CAT(0) cube complex, answering a question by Barnhill and Chatterji.
In this article, we generalise Haglund and Wise's theory of special cube complexes to groups acting on quasi-median graphs. More precisely, we define special actions on quasi-median graphs, and we show that a group which acts specially on a quasi-median graph with finitely many orbits of vertices must embed as a virtual retract into a graph product of finite extensions of clique-stabilisers. In the second part of the article, we apply the theory to fundamental groups of some graphs of groups called right-angled graphs of groups.
We study the acylindrical hyperbolicity of groups acting by isometries on CAT(0) cube complexes, and obtain simple criteria formulated in terms of stabilisers for the action. Namely, we show that a group acting essentially and non-elementarily on a finite dimensional irreducible CAT(0) cube complex is acylindrically hyperbolic if there exist two hyperplanes whose stabilisers intersect along a finite subgroup. We also give further conditions on the geometry of the complex so that the result holds if we only require the existence of a single pair of points whose stabilisers intersect along a fin…
In this article, we state and prove a general criterion which prevents some groups from acting properly on finite-dimensional CAT(0) cube complexes. As an application, we show that, for every non-trivial finite group $F$, the lamplighter group $F \wr \mathbb{F}_2$ over a free group does not act properly on a finite-dimensional CAT(0) cube complex (although it acts properly on a infinite-dimensional CAT(0) cube complex). We also deduce from this general criterion that, roughly speaking, given a group $G$ acting on a CAT(0) cube complex of finite dimension and an infinite torsion subgroup $L \le…
We construct free abelian subgroups of the group $U(A_Γ)$ of untwisted outer automorphisms of a right-angled Artin group, thus giving lower bounds on the virtual cohomological dimension. The group $U(A_Γ)$ was previously studied by Charney, Stambaugh and the second author, who constructed a contractible cube complex on which it acts properly and cocompactly, giving an upper bound for the virtual cohomological dimension. The ranks of our free abelian subgroups are equal to the dimensions of the principal cubes in this complex. These are often of maximal dimension, so that the upper and lower bo…
The question which motivates the article is the following: given a group acting on a CAT(0) cube complex, how can we prove that it is acylindrically hyperbolic? Keeping this goal in mind, we show a weak acylindricity of the action on the contact graph associated to a CAT(0) cube complex, and we prove a characterisation of WPD contracting isometries of CAT(0) cube complexes. As a first consequence, we find alternative arguments to show several criteria which were proved by Indira Chatterji and Alexandre Martin. Next, we show that if a group acts essentially and acylindrically on the hyperplanes…
We introduce a $\mathbb{Z}$-valued cross ratio on Roller boundaries of ${\rm CAT(0)}$ cube complexes. We motivate its relevance by showing that every cross-ratio preserving bijection of Roller boundaries uniquely extends to a cubical isomorphism. Our results are strikingly general and even apply to infinite dimensional, locally infinite cube complexes with trivial automorphism group.
These notes grew out of two lectures I have given on CAT(0) cube complexes. I've tried to keep the material elementary and self-contained in order to keep the material easily accessible and to provide an elementary introduction on the topic for advanced bachelor students or early master students with little to no previous knowledge on geometric group theory or CAT(0) geometry.
We develop the foundations of the theory of relatively geometric actions of relatively hyperbolic groups on CAT(0) cube complexes, a notion introduced in our previous work [5]. In the relatively geometric setting we prove: full relatively quasi-convex subgroups are convex compact; an analog of Agol's Theorem; and a version of Haglund--Wise's Canonical Completion and Retraction.
In a seminal paper, Stallings introduced folding of morphisms of graphs. One consequence of folding is the representation of finitely-generated subgroups of a finite-rank free group as immersions of finite graphs. Stallings's methods allow one to construct this representation algorithmically, giving effective, algorithmic answers and proofs to classical questions about subgroups of free groups. Recently Dani--Levcovitz used Stallings-like methods to study subgroups of right-angled Coxeter groups, which act geometrically on CAT(0) cube complexes. In this paper we extend their techniques to fund…
The most common geometric interpretation of the Yang-Baxter equation is by braids, knots and relevant Reidemeister moves. So far, cubes were used for connections with the third Reidemeister move only. We will show that there are higher-dimensional cube complexes solving the $D$-state Yang-Baxter equation for arbitrarily large $D$. More precisely, we introduce explicit constructions of cube complexes covered by products of $n$ trees and show that these cube complexes lead to new solutions of the Yang-Baxter equations.
If $G$ is a group acting geometrically on a CAT(0) cube complex $X$ and if $g \in G$ is an infinite-order element, we show that exactly one of the following situations occurs: (i) $g$ defines a rank-one isometry of $X$; (ii) the stable centraliser $SC_G(g)= \{ h \in G \mid \exists n \geq 1, [h,g^n]=1 \}$ of $g$ is not virtually cyclic; (iii) $\mathrm{Fix}_Y(g^n)$ is finite for every $n \geq 1$ and the sequence $(\mathrm{Fix}_Y(g^n))$ takes infinitely many values, where $Y$ is a cubical component of the Roller boundary of $X$ which contains an endpoint of an axis of $g$. We also show that (iii)…
We construct vertex transitive lattices on products of trees of arbitrary dimension $d \geq 1$ based on quaternion algebras over global fields with exactly two ramified places. Starting from arithmetic examples, we find non-residually finite groups generalizing earlier results of Wise, Burger and Mozes to higher dimension. We make effective use of the combinatorial language of cubical sets and the doubling construction generalized to arbitrary dimension. Congruence subgroups of these quaternion lattices yield explicit cubical Ramanujan complexes, a higher dimensional cubical version of Ramanuj…
We show that every $n$-quasiflat in a $n$-dimensional $CAT(0)$ cube complex is at finite Hausdorff distance from a finite union of $n$-dimensional orthants. Then we introduce a class of cube complexes, called {\em weakly special} cube complexes and show that quasi-isometries between their universal coverings preserve top dimensional flats. We use this to establish several quasi-isometry invariants for right-angled Artin groups. Some of our arguments also extend to $CAT(0)$ spaces of finite geometric dimension. In particular, we give a short proof of the fact that a top dimensional quasiflat in…
For each d we construct CAT(0) cube complexes on which Cremona groups rank d act by isometries. From these actions we deduce new and old group theoretical and dynamical results about Cremona groups. In particular, we study the dynamical behaviour of the irreducible components of exceptional loci, we prove regularization theorems, we find new constraints on the degree growth for non-regularizable birational transformations, and we show that the centralizer of certain birational transformations is small.
We describe a group theoretic condition which ensures that any cellular action of a group satisfying this condition on a CAT(0) cube complex has a global fixed point. In particular, we show that this fixed point criterion is satisfied by the automorphism group of a free group of rank n. For the unique subgroup of index two in the automorphism group of a free group, we obtain a similar result.
Given a CAT(0) cube complex X, we show that if Aut(X) $\neq$ Isom(X) then there exists a full subcomplex of X which decomposes as a product with $\mathbb{R}^n$. As applications, we prove that if X is $δ$-hyperbolic, cocompact and 1-ended, then Aut(X) $=$ Isom(X) unless X is quasi-isometric to $\mathbb{H}^2$, and extend the rank-rigidity result of Caprace-Sageev to any lattice $ Γ\leq$ Isom(X).
We show that plane Cremona groups over finite fields embed as dense subgroups into Neretin groups, i.e. groups of almost automorphisms of rooted trees. We also show that if the finite base field has even characteristic and contains at least 4 elements, then the permutations induced by birational transformations on rational points of regular projective surfaces are even. In a second part, we construct explicit locally compact CAT(0) cube complexes, on which Neretin groups act properly. This allows us to recover in a unified way various results on Neretin groups such as that they are of type $F_…
We introduce the notion of coupled link cube complex (CLCC) as a means of constructing interesting cocompactly cubulated groups. CLCCs are defined locally, making them a useful tool when precise control over the links is required. In this paper we study some general properties of CLCCs, such as their (co)homological dimension and criteria for hyperbolicity. Some examples of fundamental groups of CLCCs are RAAGs, RACGs, surface groups and some manifold groups. As immediate applications of our criteria we produce a number of cubulated 3 and 4 manifolds with hyperbolic fundamental group.
We provide geometric conditions on a pair of hyperplanes of a CAT(0) cube complex that imply divergence bounds for the cube complex. As an application, we classify all right-angled Coxeter groups with quadratic divergence and show right-angled Coxeter groups cannot exhibit a divergence function between quadratic and cubic. This generalizes a theorem of Dani-Thomas that addressed the class of 2-dimensional right-angled Coxeter groups. As another application, we provide an inductive graph theoretic criteria on a right-angled Coxeter group's defining graph which allows us to recognize arbitrary i…
