We show that each of the Artin groups of type $B_n$ and $D_n$ can be presented as a semidirect product $F \rtimes {\cal B}_n$, where $F$ is a free group and ${\cal B}_n$ is the $n$-string braid group. We explain how these semidirect product structures arise quite naturally from fibrations, and observe that, in each case, the action of the braid group ${\cal B}_n$ on the free group $F$ is classical. We prove that, for each of the semidirect products, the group of automorphisms which leave invariant the normal subgroup $F$ is small: namely, ${\rm Out}(A(B_n),F)$ has order 2, and ${\rm Out}(A(D_n),F)$ has order 4 if $n$ is even and 2 if $n$ is odd. It is known that the Artin group of type $D_n$ may be viewed as an index 2 subgroup of the $n$-string braid group over some orbifold. Applying the same techniques, we show that this latter group has an outer automorphism group of order 2. Finally, we determine the automorphism groups of all Artin groups or rank 2.
An Artin HNN-extension is an HNN-extension of an Artin group in which the stable letter conjugates a pair of suitably chosen subsets of the standard generating set. We show that some finite index subgroup of an Artin HNN-extension embeds in an Artin group. We also obtain an analogous result for Coxeter groups.
The Tits Conjecture, proved by Crisp and Paris, states that squares of the standard generators of any Artin group generate an obvious right-angled Artin subgroup. We consider a larger set of elements consisting of all the centers of the irreducible spherical special subgroups of the Artin group, and conjecture that sufficiently large powers of those elements generate an obvious right-angled Artin subgroup. This alleged right-angled Artin subgroup is in some sense as large as possible; its nerve is homeomorphic to the nerve of the ambient Artin group. We verify this conjecture for the class of …
We obtain a number of results regarding freeness, quasiconvexity and separability for subgroups of Coxeter groups, Artin groups and one-relator groups with torsion.
It is conjectured that the central quotient of every irreducible Artin group is either virtually cyclic or acylindrically hyperbolic. We prove this conjecture for Artin groups associated to triangle-free graphs and Artin groups of large type associated to cones over square-free bipartite graphs. In fact, we treat Artin groups that are known to be CAT(0) groups by a result of Brady and McCammond.
We give an explicit formula for the cohomology of a right angled Artin group with group ring coefficients in terms of the cohomology of its defining flag complex.
In this article we construct a piecewise Euclidean, non-positively curved 2-complex for the 3-generator Artin groups of large type. As a consequence we show that these groups are biautomatic. A slight modification of the proof shows that many other Artin groups are also biautomatic. The general question (whether all Artin groups are biautomatic) remains open.
We prove that an Artin-Tits group of type $\tilde C$ is the group of fractions of a Garside monoid, analogous to the known dual monoids associated with Artin-Tits groups of spherical type and obtained by the "generated group" method. This answers, in this particular case, a general question on Artin-Tits groups, gives a new presentation of an Artin-Tits group of type $\tilde C$, and has consequences for the word problem, the computation of some centralizers or the triviality of the center. A key point of the proof is to show that this group is a group of fixed points in an Artin-Tits group of …
We show that many $2$-dimensional Artin groups are residually finite. This includes $3$-generator Artin groups with labels $\geq 4$ except for $(2m+1, 4,4)$ for any $m\geq 2$. As a first step towards residual finiteness we show that these Artin groups, and many more, split as free products with amalgamation or HNN extensions of finite rank free groups. Among others, this holds for all large type Artin groups with defining graph admitting an orientation, where each simple cycle is directed.
The goal of this mostly expository paper is to present several candidates for hyperbolic structures on irreducible Artin-Tits groups of spherical type and to elucidate some relations between them. Most constructions are algebraic analogues of previously known hyperbolic structures on Artin braid groups coming from natural actions of these groups on curve graphs and (modified) arc graphs of punctured disks.
In this paper we introduce and study some geometric objects associated to Artin monoids. The Deligne complex for an Artin group is a cube complex that was introduced by the second author and Davis (1995) to study the K(π,1) conjecture for these groups. Using a notion of Artin monoid cosets, we construct a version of the Deligne complex for Artin monoids. We show that for any Artin monoid this cube complex is contractible. Furthermore, we study the embedding of the monoid Deligne complex into the Deligne complex for the corresponding Artin group. We show that for any Artin group this is a local…
Charney and Morris-Wright showed acylindrical hyperbolicity of Artin groups of infinite type associated with graphs that are not joins, by studying clique-cube complexes and actions on them. In this paper, by developing their study and formulating some additional discussion, we demonstrate that acylindrical hyperbolicity holds for more general Artin groups. Indeed, we are able to treat Artin groups of infinite type associated with graphs that are not cones.
We introduce the class of perturbed right-angled Artin groups. These are constructed by gluing Bieri double groups into standard right-angled Artin groups. As a first application of this construction we obtain families of CAT(0) groups containing finitely presented subgroups which are not of type $\mathrm{FP}_3$, and have exponential, or polynomial Dehn functions of prescribed degree.
This article is a survey on the braid groups, the Artin groups, and the Garside groups. It is a presentation, accessible to non-experts, of various topological and algebraic aspects of these groups. It is also a report on three points of the theory: the faithful linear representations, the cohomology, and the geometrical representations.
We give a necessary and sufficient condition for a graph to have a right-angled Artin group as its braid group for braid index $\ge 5$. In order to have the necessity part, graphs are organized into small classes so that one of homological or cohomological characteristics of right-angled Artin groups can be applied. Finally we show that a given graph is planar iff the first homology of its 2-braid group is torsion-free and leave the corresponding statement for $n$-braid groups as a conjecture along with few other conjectures about graphs whose braid groups of index $\le 4$ are right-angled Art…
The braid group $B_{n}$, endowed with Artin's presentation, admits two distinguished involutions. One is the anti-automorphism ${\rm{rev}}: B_{n} \to B_{n}$, $v \mapsto \bar{v}$, defined by reading braids in the reverse order (from right to left instead of left to right). Another one is the conjugation $τ:x \mapsto Δ^{-1}x Δ$ by the generalized half-twist (Garside element). More generally, the involution ${\rm{rev}}$ is defined for all Artin groups (equipped with Artin's presentation) and the involution $τ$ is defined for all Artin groups of finite type. A palindrome is an element invariant un…
The goal of this paper is to construct examples of centralizers in the Artin braid groups requiring the number of generators quadratic in the number of strings. These examples disprove a recent conjecture of N. Franco and J. Gonzalez-Meneses.
Artin groups of finite type are not as well understood as braid groups. This is due to the additional geometric properties of braid groups coming from their close connection to mapping class groups. For each Artin group of finite type, we construct a space (simplicial complex) analogous to Teichmueller space that satisfies a weak nonpositive curvature condition and also a space "at infinity" analogous to the space of projective measured laminations. Using these constructs, we deduce several group-theoretic properties of Artin groups of finite type that are well-known in the case of braid group…
Let $A$ and $A'$ be two Artin groups of spherical type, and let $A_1,\dots,A_p$ (resp. $A'_1,\dots,A'_q$) be the irreducible components of $A$ (resp. $A'$). We show that $A$ and $A'$ are commensurable if and only if $p=q$ and, up to permutation of the indices, $A_i$ and $A'_i$ are commensurable for every $i$. We prove that, if two Artin groups of spherical type are commensurable, then they have the same rank. For a fixed $n$, we give a complete classification of the irreducible Artin groups of rank $n$ that are commensurable with the group of type $A_n$. Note that it will remain 6 pairs of gro…
The n-string braid group of a graph X is defined as the fundamental group of the n-point configuration space of the space X. This configuration space is a finite dimensional aspherical space. A. Abrams and R. Ghrist have conjectured that this braid group is a right angled Artin group if X is planar. We prove their conjecture if X is a tree whose nodes all lie in a single interval of X.
Artin-Tits groups act on a certain delta-hyperbolic complex, called the "additional length complex". For an element of the group, acting loxodromically on this complex is a property analogous to the property of being pseudo-Anosov for elements of mapping class groups. By analogy with a well-known conjecture about mapping class groups, we conjecture that "most" elements of Artin-Tits groups act loxodromically. More precisely, in the Cayley graph of a subgroup $G$ of an Artin-Tits group, the proportion of loxodromically acting elements in a ball of large radius should tend to one as the radius t…
In this note we give the quasi-isometry classification for a class of right angled Artin groups. In particular, we obtain the first such classification for a class of Artin groups with dimension larger than 2; our families exist in every dimension.
We construct a family of morphisms between Artin-Tits groups which generalise the ones constructed by J. Crisp in [Injective maps between Artin groups, Proceedings of the Special Year in Geometric Group Theory, Berlin, (1999), 119 -- 138]. We show that their restrictions to the positive Artin monoids respect normal forms, and that for Artin-Tits groups of type FC, these morphisms are injective. The proof of the second result uses the Deligne Complex, and the normal cube paths constructed in [G. Niblo and L. Reeves, The geometry of cube complexes and the complexity of their fundamental groups, …
We prove that, aside from the obvious exceptions, the mapping class group of a compact orientable surface is not abstractly commensurable with any right-angled Artin group. Our argument applies to various subgroups of the mapping class group---the subgroups generated by powers of Dehn twists and the terms of the Johnson filtration---and additionally to the outer automorphism group of a free group and to certain linear groups.
In a recent article, Cumplido and Paris studied the question of commensurability between Artin groups of spherical type. Their analysis left six cases undecided, for the following pairs of Artin groups: $(F_4,D_4)$, $(H_4,D_4)$, $(F_4,H_4)$, $(E_6,D_6)$, $(E_7,D_7)$, and $(E_8,D_8)$. In this note we resolve the first two of these cases, namely, we show that the Artin groups of types $F_4$ and $H_4$ are not commensurable with that of type $D_4$. As a key step, we realize the abstract commensurator of the Artin group of type $D_4$ as the extended mapping class group of the torus with three punct…
We develop an analogy between right-angled Artin groups and mapping class groups through the geometry of their actions on the extension graph and the curve graph respectively. The central result in this paper is the fact that each right-angled Artin group acts acylindrically on its extension graph. From this result we are able to develop a Nielsen--Thurston classification for elements in the right-angled Artin group. Our analogy spans both the algebra regarding subgroups of right-angled Artin groups and mapping class groups, as well as the geometry of the extension graph and the curve graph. O…
We show that given a collection $X=\{f_1$, \ldots , $f_m\}$ of pure mapping classes on a surface $S$, there is an explicit constant N, depending only on $X$, such that their Nth powers $\{f_1^N$, \ldots , $f_m^N\}$ generate the expected right-angled Artin subgroup of MCG($S$). Moreover, we show that these subgroups are undistorted.
We prove that every right-angled Artin group embeds into the $C^{\infty}$ diffeomorphism group of the real line. As a corollary, we show every limit group, and more generally every countable residually RAAG group, embeds into the $C^{\infty}$ diffeomorphism group of the real line.
We determine the factorial growth rate of the number of finite index subgroups of right-angled Artin groups as a function of the index. This turns out to depend solely on the independence number of the defining graph. We also make a conjecture for right-angled Coxeter groups and prove that it holds in a limited setting.
We construct quasi-isometric embeddings from right-angled Artin groups into the outer automorphism group of a free group. These homomorphisms are in analogy with those constructed in \cite{CLM}, where the target group is the mapping class group of a surface. Toward this goal, we develop tools in the free group setting that mirror those for surface groups as well as discuss various analogs of subsurface projection; these may be of independent interest.
In all known examples of a CAT(0) group acting on CAT(0) spaces with non-homeomorphic CAT(0) visual boundaries, the boundaries are each not path connected. In this paper, we show this does not have to be the case by providing examples of right-angled Artin groups which exhibit non-unique CAT(0) boundaries where all of the boundaries are arbitrarily connected. We also prove a combination theorem for certain amalgams of CAT(0) groups to act on spaces with non-path connected visual boundaries. We apply this theorem to some right-angled Artin groups.
We define the braid groups of a two-dimensional orbifold and introduce conventions for drawing braid pictures. We use these to realize the Artin groups associated to the spherical Coxeter diagrams A_n, B_n=C_n and D_n and the affine diagrams tilde{A}_n, tilde{B}_n, tilde{C}_n and tilde{D}_n as subgroups of the braid groups of various simple orbifolds. The cases D_n, tilde{B}_n, tilde{C}_n and tilde{D}_n are new. In each case the Artin group is a normal subgroup with abelian quotient; in all cases except tilde{A}_n the quotient is finite. We illustrate the value of our braid calculus by perform…
We survey the role of right-angled Artin groups in the theory of diffeomorphism groups of low dimensional manifolds. We first describe some of the subgroup structure of right-angled Artin groups. We then discuss the interplay between algebraic structure, compactness, and regularity for group actions on one--dimensional manifolds. For compact one--manifolds, every right-angled Artin group acts faithfully by $C^1$ diffeomorphisms, but the right-angled Artin groups which act faithfully by $C^2$ diffeomorphisms are very restricted. For the real line, every right-angled Artin group acts faithfully …
We survey the relationship between the combinatorics and geometry of graphs and the algebraic structure of right-angled Artin groups. We concentrate on the defining graph of the right-angled Artin group and on the extension graph associated to the right-angled Artin group. Additionally, we discuss connections to geometric group theory and complexity theory. The final version of this survey will appear in "In the tradition of Thurston, vol.~II", ed.~K.~Ohshika and A.~Papadopoulos.
We prove the strong Atiyah conjecture for right-angled Artin groups and right-angled Coxeter groups. More generally, we prove it for groups which are certain finite extensions or elementary amenable extensions of such groups.
We give a conjectural classification of virtually cocompactly cubulated Artin-Tits groups (i.e. having a finite index subgroup acting geometrically on a CAT(0) cube complex), which we prove for all Artin-Tits groups of spherical type, FC type or two-dimensional type. A particular case is that for $n \geq 4$, the $n$-strand braid group is not virtually cocompactly cubulated.
This paper is a short survey on four basic questions on Artin-Tits groups: the torsion, the center, the word problem, and the cohomology ($K(π,1)$ problem). It is also an opportunity to prove three new results concerning these questions: (1) if all free of infinity Artin-Tits groups are torsion free, then all Artin-Tits groups will be torsion free; (2) If all free of infinity irreducible non-spherical type Artin-Tits groups have a trivial center then all irreducible non-spherical type Artin-Tits groups will have a trivial center; (3) if all free of infinity Artin-Tits groups have solutions to …
In this note, we prove that the $K(π,1)$-conjecture for Artin groups implies the center conjecture for Artin groups. Specifically, every Artin group without a spherical factor that satisfies the $K(π,1)$-conjecture has a trivial center.
We compute the BNS-invariant for the pure symmetric automorphism groups of right-angled Artin groups. We use this calculation to show that the pure symmetric automorphism group of a right-angled Artin group is itself not a right-angled Artin group provided that its defining graph contains a separating intersection of links.
We construct an embedding of any right-angled Artin group $G(Δ)$ defined by a graph $Δ$ into a graph braid group. The number of strands required for the braid group is equal to the chromatic number of $Δ$. This construction yields an example of a hyperbolic surface subgroup embedded in a two strand planar graph braid group.
We find a condition on the underlying graph of an Artin group that fully determines if it is subgroup separable. As a consequence, an Artin group is subgroup separable if and only if it can be obtained from Artin groups of ranks at most 2 via a finite sequence of free products and direct products with the infinite cyclic group. This result generalizes the Metaftsis-Raptis criterion for Right-Angled Artin groups.
In this paper we consider several classical and novel algorithmic problems for right-angled Artin groups, some of which are closely related to graph theoretic problems, and study their computational complexity. We study these problems with a view towards applications to cryptography.
In this short note we prove that a class of Artin groups of affine and complex types are virtually poly-free, answering partially the question if all Artin groups are virtually poly-free.
We prove that if two transvection-free right-angled Artin groups are measure equivalent, then they have isomorphic extension graphs. As a consequence, two right-angled Artin groups with finite outer automorphism groups are measure equivalent if and only if they are isomorphic. This matches the quasi-isometry classification. However, in contrast with the quasi-isometry question, we observe that no right-angled Artin group is superrigid for measure equivalence in the strongest possible sense, for two reasons. First, a right-angled Artin group $G$ is always measure equivalent to any graph product…
