The automorphism groups of integral Lorentzian lattices act by isometries on hyperbolic space with finite covolume. In the case of reflective integral lattices, the automorphism groups are commensurable to arithmetic hyperbolic reflection groups. However, for a fixed dimension, there is only finitely many reflective integral Lorentzian lattices, and these can only occur in small dimensions. The goal of this note is to construct embeddings of low-dimensional integral Lorentzian lattices into unimodular Lorentzian lattices associated to right-angled reflection groups. As an application, we construct many discrete groups of $\mathrm{Isom}(\mathbb{H}^n)$ for small $n$ which are C-special in the sense of Haglund-Wise.
We present a new method for showing that groups are virtually special. This is done by considering finite quotients and linear characters. We use this to show that an infinite family of groups, related to Bestvina-Brady groups and branching, provides new examples of virtually special groups outside of a hyperbolic context.
A group is tubular if it acts on a tree with $\mathbb{Z}^2$ vertex stabilizers and $\mathbb{Z}$ edge stabilizers. We prove that a tubular group is virtually special if and only if it acts freely on a locally finite CAT(0) cube complex. Furthermore, we prove that if a tubular group acts freely on a finite dimensional CAT(0) cube complex, then it virtually acts freely on a three dimensional CAT(0) cube complex.
We prove that any word hyperbolic group which is virtually compact special (in the sense of Haglund and Wise) is conjugacy separable. As a consequence we deduce that all word hyperbolic Coxeter groups and many classical small cancellation groups are conjugacy separable. To get the main result we establish a new criterion for showing that elements of prime order are conjugacy distinguished. This criterion is of independent interest; its proof is based on a combination of discrete and profinite (co)homology theories.
Let M be a compact oriented irreducible 3-manifold which is neither a graph manifold nor a hyperbolic manifold. We prove that the fundamental group of M is virtually special.
Let $G$ be a virtually special group. Then the residual finiteness growth of $G$ is at most linear. This result cannot be found by embedding $G$ into a special linear group. Indeed, the special linear group $\text{SL}_k(\mathbb{Z})$, for $k > 2$, has residual finiteness growth $n^{k-1}$.
Let M be a graph manifold. We prove that fundamental groups of embedded incompressible surfaces in M are separable in the fundamental group of M, and that the double cosets for crossing surfaces are also separable. We deduce that if there is a "sufficient" collection of surfaces in M, then the fundamental group of M is virtually the fundamental group of a special nonpositively curved cube complex. We provide a sufficient collection for graph manifolds with boundary thus proving that their fundamental groups are virtually special, and hence linear.
We provide new conditions for the Strong Atiyah conjecture to lift to finite group extensions. In particular, we show cocompact special groups satisfy these conditions, so the Strong Atiyah conjecture holds for virtually cocompact special groups.
We give a new, effective proof of the separability of cubically convex-cocompact subgroups of special groups. As a consequence, we show that if $G$ is a virtually compact special hyperbolic group, and $Q\leq G$ is a $K$-quasiconvex subgroup, then any $g\in G-Q$ of word-length at most $n$ is separated from $Q$ by a subgroup whose index is polynomial in $n$ and exponential in $K$. This generalizes a result of Bou-Rabee and the authors on residual finiteness growth and a result of the second author on surface groups.
We address the question of whether the property of being virtually special (in the sense of Haglund and Wise) is algorithmically decidable for finite, non-positively curved cube complexes. Our main theorem shows that it cannot be decided locally, i.e. by examining one hyperplane at a time. Specifically, we prove that there does not exist an algorithm that, given a compact non-positively squared 2-complex X and a hyperplane H in X can decide whether or not there is a finite-sheeted cover of X in which no lift of H self-osculates.
This article is dedicated to the characterisation of the relative hyperbolicity of Haglund and Wise's special groups. More precise, we introduce a new combinatorial formalism to study (virtually) special groups, and we prove that, given a cocompact special group $G$ and a finite collection of subgroups $\mathcal{H}$, then $G$ is hyperbolic relative to $\mathcal{H}$ if and only if (i) each subgroup of $\mathcal{H}$ is convex-cocompact, (ii) $\mathcal{H}$ is an almost malnormal collection, and (iii) every non-virtually cyclic abelian subgroup of $G$ is contained in a conjugate of some group of $…
Let M be a complete hyperbolic 3-manifold of finite volume that admits a decomposition into right-angled ideal polyhedra. We show that M has a deformation retraction that is a virtually special square complex, in the sense of Haglund and Wise and deduce that such manifolds are virtually fibered. We generalise a theorem of Haglund and Wise to the relatively hyperbolic setting and deduce that the fundamental group of M is LERF and that the geometrically finite subgroups of the fundamental group are virtual retracts. Examples of 3-manifolds admitting such a decomposition include augmented link co…
A monoid is said to be special if it admits a presentation in which all defining relations are of the form $w = 1$. Groups are familiar examples of special monoids. This article studies the geometric and structural properties of the Cayley graphs of finitely presented special monoids, building on work by Zhang and Gray-Steinberg. It is shown that the right Cayley graph $Γ$ of a special monoid $M$ is a context-free graph, in the sense of Muller & Schupp, if and only if the group of units of $M$ is virtually free. This generalises the geometric aspect of the well-known Muller-Schupp Theorem from…
In this paper, we complete the classification of which compact 3-manifolds have a virtually compact special fundamental group by addressing the case of mixed 3-manifolds. A compact aspherical 3-manifold is mixed if has at least one JSJ torus and at least one hyperbolic block. We show the fundamental group of a mixed manifold M is virtually compact special iff M is chargeless, i.e. each interior Seifert fibered block has a trivial Euler number relative to the fibers of adjacent blocks.
A finitely generated group $Γ$ is called strongly scale-invariant if there exists an injective endomorphism $φ: Γ\to Γ$ with the image $φ(Γ)$ of finite index in $Γ$ and the subgroup $\displaystyle \bigcap_{n>0}φ^n(Γ)$ finite. The only known examples of such groups are virtually nilpotent, or equivalently, all examples have polynomial growth. A question by Nekrashevych and Pete asks whether these groups are the only possibilities for such endomorphisms, motivated by the positive answer due to Gromov in the special case of expanding group morphisms. In this paper, we study this question for the …
Given a discrete group $G$, for any integer $r\geqslant0$ we consider the family of all virtually abelian subgroups of $G$ of rank at most $r$. We give an upper bound for the Bredon cohomological dimension of $G$ for this family for a certain class of groups acting on $\mathrm{CAT}(0)$ spaces. This covers the case of Coxeter groups, Right-angled Artin groups, fundamental groups of special cube complexes and graph products of finite groups. Our construction partially answers a question of J.-F. Lafont.
A classical result by K.B. Lee states that every group morphism between almost crystallographic groups is induced by an affine map on the nilpotent Lie group whereon these groups by definition act. It is the main technique for studying morphisms between virtually nilpotent groups, having important applications in fixed point theory, for example as a tool to compute Nielsen numbers for self-maps on infra-nilmanifolds. In this paper we generalize this result to morphisms between virtually polycyclic groups, which are known to act crystallographically by affine transformations on a nilpotent Lie …
We show, using Wise's equitable sets criterion, that every tubular free by cyclic group acts freely on a CAT(0) cube complex. We also show that these groups have a finite index subgroup satisfying the strongest Tits alternative, which means that every subgroup either surjects a non abelian free group or is torsion free abelian. In particular the Gersten group is the first known group virtually having this property but which is not virtually special nor virtually residually free.
We provide a condition on the links of polygonal complexes that is sufficient to ensure groups acting properly discontinuously and cocompactly on such complexes contain a virtually free codimension-1 subgroup. We provide stronger conditions on the links of polygonal complexes, which are sufficient to ensure groups acting properly discontinuously and cocompactly on such complexes act properly discontinuously on a CAT(0) cube complex. If the group is hyperbolic then this action is also cocompact, hence by Agol's Theorem the group is virtually special (in the sense of Haglund-Wise); in particular…
Previously one of us introduced a family of groups $G^M_L(S)$, parametrized by a finite flag complex $L$, a regular covering $M$ of $L$, and a set $S$ of integers. We give conjectural descriptions of when $G^M_L(S)$ is either residually finite or virtually torsion-free. In the case that $M$ is a finite cover and $S$ is periodic, there is an extension with kernel $G_L^M(S)$ and infinite cyclic quotient that is a CAT(0) cubical group. We conjecture that this group is virtually special. We relate these three conjectures to each other and prove many cases of them.
In arXiv:1204.2810 Agol proved the Virtual Haken and Virtual Fibering Conjectures by confirming a conjecture of Wise: Every cubulated hyperbolic group is virtually special. We extend this result to cocompactly cubulated relatively hyperbolic groups with minimal assumptions on the parabolic subgroups. Our proof proceeds by first recubulating to obtain an improper action with controlled stabilizers (a weakly relatively geometric action), and then Dehn filling to obtain many cubulated hyperbolic quotients. We apply our results to prove the Relative Cannon Conjecture for certain cubulated or parti…
In this paper we prove that RAAGs are distinguished from each other by their pro-$p$ completions for any choice of prime $p$, and that RACGs are distinguished from each other by their pro-2 completions. We also give a new proof that hyperbolic virtually special groups are good in the sense of Serre. Furthermore we give an example of a property of the underlying graph of a RAAG that translates to a property of the profinite completion.
We study the structure of the commensurator of a virtually abelian subgroup $H$ in $G$, where $G$ acts properly on a $\mathrm{CAT}(0)$ space $X$. When $X$ is a Hadamard manifold and $H$ is semisimple, we show that the commensurator of $H$ coincides with the normalizer of a finite index subgroup of $H$. When $X$ is a $\mathrm{CAT}(0)$ cube complex or a thick Euclidean building and the action of $G$ is cellular, we show that the commensurator of $H$ is an ascending union of normalizers of finite index subgroups of $H$. We explore several special cases where the results can be strengthened and we…
A monoid is called special if it admits a presentation in which all defining relations are of the form $w = 1$. Every group is special, but not every monoid is special. In this article, we describe the language-theoretic properties of the word problem, in the sense of Duncan & Gilman, for special monoids in terms of their group of units. We prove that a special monoid has context-free word problem if and only if its group of units is virtually free, giving a full generalisation of the Muller-Schupp theorem. This fully answers, for the class of special monoids, a question posed by Duncan & Gilm…
We prove the bounded packing property for any abelian subgroup of a group acting properly and cocompactly on a CAT(0) cube complex. A main ingredient of the proof is a cubical flat torus theorem. This ingredient is also used to show that central HNN extensions of maximal free-abelian subgroups of compact special groups are virtually special, and to produce various examples of groups that are not cocompactly cubulated.
The idea of "JSJ-decompositions" for 3-manifolds began with work of Waldhausen and was developed later through work of Jaco, Shalen and Johansen. It was shown that there is a finite collection of 2-sided, incompressible tori that separate a given closed irreducible 3-manifold into pieces with strong topological structure. Sela introduced the idea of JSJ-decompositions for groups, an idea that has flourished in a variety of directions. The general idea is to consider a certain class X of groups and splittings of groups in X by groups in another class Y. E.g. Rips and Sela considered splittings …
Agol proved that hyperbolic cubulated groups are virtually special. The aim of these notes is to make the proof accessible to a wider audience; we retain the underlying ideas and constructions of Agol, but substantially change or add to many parts of the argument to give a more transparent and detailed account.
