We study Coxeter groups from which there is a natural map onto a symmetric group. Such groups have natural quotient groups related to presentations of the symmetric group on an arbitrary set $T$ of transpositions. These quotients, denoted here by C_Y(T), are a special type of the generalized Coxeter groups defined in \cite{CST}, and also arise in the computation of certain invariants of surfaces.
We use a surprising action of $S_n$ on the kernel of the surjection $C_Y(T) \ra S_n$ to show that this kernel embeds in the direct product of $n$ copies of the free group $π_1(T)$ (with the exception of $T$ being the full set of transpositions in $S_4$). As a result, we show that the groups $C_Y(T)$ are either virtually Abelian or contain a non-Abelian free subgroup.
Let $C(T)$ be a generalized Coxeter group, which has a natural map onto one of the classical Coxeter groups, either $B_n$ or $D_n$. Let $C_Y(T)$ be a natural quotient of $C(T)$, and if $C(T)$ is simply-laced (which means all the relations between the generators has order 2 or 3), $C_Y(T)$ is a generalized Coxeter group, too . Let $A_{t,n}$ be a group which contains $t$ Abelian groups generated by $n$ elements. The main result in this paper is that $C_Y(T)$ is isomorphic to $A_{t,n} \semidirect B_n$ or $A_{t,n} \semidirect D_n$, depends on whether the signed graph $T$ contains loops or not, or …
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.
Let $X$ be the surface $\T\times\T$ where $\T$ is the complex torus. This paper is the third in a series, studying the fundamental group of the Galois cover of $X$ \wrt a generic projection onto $\C¶^2$. Van Kampen Theorem gives a presentation of the fundamental group of the complement of the branch curve, with 54 generators and more than 2000 relations. Here we introduce a certain natural quotient (obtained by identifying pairs of generators), prove it is a quotient of a Coxeter group related to the degeneration of $X$, and show that this quotient is virtually nilpotent.
In this article, we first show that in case $n$ is even which Coxeter element in $\mathfrak{S}_{n}$ affords the longest by taking its power to $n/2$. We also show that in case $n$ is odd which Coxeter element affords the longest in $\mathfrak{S}_{n}$.
We apply the techniques of symmetric generation to establish the standard presentations of the finite simply laced irreducible finite Coxeter groups, that is the Coxeter groups of types An, Dn and En, and show that these are naturally arrived at purely through consideration of certain natural actions of symmetric groups. We go on to use these techniques to provide explicit representations of these groups.
The strong symmetric genus of a finite group G is the smallest genus of a closed orientable topological surface on which G acts faithfully as a group of orientation preserving automorphisms. In this paper we complete the calculation of the strong symmetric genus for each finite Coxeter group excluding the group E8.
The aim of this note is to show that the cycle decomposition of elements of the symmetric group admits a quite natural formulation in the framework of dual Coxeter theory, yielding a generalization of it to the family of so-called parabolic quasi-Coxeter elements of Coxeter groups (in the symmetric group every element is a parabolic quasi-Coxeter element). We show that such an element admits an analogue of the cycle decomposition. Elements which are not in this family still admit a generalized cycle decomposition, but it is not unique in general.
The OGS for non-abelian groups is an interesting generalization of the basis of finite abelian groups. The definition of OGS states that every element of a group has a unique presentation as a product of some powers of specific generators of the group, in a specific given order. In case of the symmetric groups Sn there is a paper of R. Shwartz, which demonstrates a strong connection between the OGS and the standard Coxeter presentation of the symmetric group, which is called the standard OGS of Sn. In this paper we generalize the standard OGS of Sn to the finite classical Coxeter group Bn. We …
The OGS for non-abelian groups is an interesting generalization of the basis of finite abelian groups. The definition of OGS states that every element of a group has a unique presentation as a product of some powers of specific generators of the group, in a specific given order. In case of the symmetric groups Sn there is a paper of R. Shwartz, which demonstrates a strong connection between the OGS and the standard Coxeter presentation of the symmetric group, which is called the standard OGS of Sn. In this paper we generalize the standard OGS of Sn to the finite classical Coxeter group Dn. We …
Given an odd prime number $p$ and a Coxeter group $W$ such that the order of the product $st$ is prime to $p$ for every Coxeter generators $s,t$ of $W$, we prove that the $p$-local homology groups $H_k(W,\mathbb{Z}_{(p)})$ vanish for $1\leq k\leq 2(p-2)$. This generalize a known vanishing result for symmetric groups due to Minoru Nakaoka.
Let $G$ be a discrete Coxeter group, $G^+$ its alternating subgroup and $\tilde{G}^+$ the spinor cover of $G^+$. A presentation of the groups $G^+$ and $\tilde{G}^+$ is proved for an arbitrary Coxeter system $(G,S)$; the generators are related to edges of the Coxeter graph. Results of the Coxeter--Todd algorithm - with this presentation - for the chains of alternating groups of types A, B and D are given.
A Coxeter group acts properly and cocompactly by isometries on the Davis complex for the group; we call the quotient of the Davis complex under this action the Davis orbicomplex for the group. We prove the set of finite covers of the Davis orbicomplexes for the set of one-ended Coxeter groups is not topologically rigid. We exhibit a quotient of a Davis complex by a one-ended right-angled Coxeter group which has two finite covers that are homotopy equivalent but not homeomorphic. We discuss consequences for the abstract commensurability classification of Coxeter groups.
We derive presentations of the interval groups related to all quasi-Coxeter elements in the Coxeter group of type $D_n$. Type $D_n$ is the only infinite family of finite Coxeter groups that admits proper quasi-Coxeter elements. The presentations we obtain are over a set of generators in bijection with what we call a Carter generating set, and the relations are those defined by the related Carter diagram together with a twisted or a cycle commutator relator, depending on whether the quasi-Coxeter element is a Coxeter element or not. The proof is based on the description of two combinatorial tec…
A permutation representation of a Coxeter group $W$ naturally defines an absolute order. This family of partial orders (which includes the absolute order on $W$) is introduced and studied in this paper. Conditions under which the associated rank generating polynomial divides the rank generating polynomial of the absolute order on $W$ are investigated when $W$ is finite. Several examples, including a symmetric group action on perfect matchings, are discussed. As an application, a well-behaved absolute order on the alternating subgroup of $W$ is defined.
Results are obtained concerning the roots of asymmetric geometric representations of Coxeter groups. These representations were independently introduced by Vinberg and Eriksson, and generalize the standard geometric representation of a Coxeter group in such a way as to include all Kac--Moody Weyl groups. In particular, a characterization of when a non-trivial multiple of a root may also be a root is given in the general context. Characterizations of when the number of such multiples of a root is finite and when the number of positive roots sent to negative roots by a group element is finite ar…
In a recent paper we claimed that both the group algebra of a finite Coxeter group $W$ as well as the Orlik-Solomon algebra of $W$ can be decomposed into a sum of induced one-dimensional representations of centralizers, one for each conjugacy class of elements of $W$, and gave a uniform proof of this claim for symmetric groups. In this note we outline an inductive approach to our conjecture. As an application of this method, we prove the inductive version of the conjecture for finite Coxeter groups of rank up to 2.
Cactus groups are traditionally defined based on symmetric groups, and pure cactus groups are particular subgroups of cactus groups. Mostovoy showed that pure cactus groups embed into right-angled Coxeter groups. We generalize this result to cactus groups associated with arbitrary finite Coxeter groups and we investigate some representations of generalized cactus groups and deduce the linearity of generalized cactus groups.
We present new efficient data structures for elements of Coxeter groups of type $A_m$ and their associated Iwahori--Hecke algebras $H(A_m)$. Usually, elements of $H(A_m)$ are represented as simple coefficient list of length $M = (m+1)!$ with respect to the standard basis, indexed by the elements of the Coxeter group. In the new data structure, elements of $H(A_m)$ are represented as nested coefficient lists. While the cost of addition is the same in both data structures, the new data structure leads to a huge improvement in the cost of multiplication in~$H(A_m)$.
We reinterpret an inequality, due originally to Sidorenko, for linear extensions of posets in terms of convex subsets of the symmetric group $\mathfrak{S}_n$. We conjecture that the analogous inequalities hold in arbitrary (not-necessarily-finite) Coxeter groups $W$, and prove this for the hyperoctahedral groups $B_n$ and all right-angled Coxeter groups. Our proof for $B_n$ (and new proof for $\mathfrak{S}_n$) use a combinatorial insertion map closely related to the well-studied promotion operator on linear extensions; this map may be of independent interest. We also note that the inequalities…
Let $W^c(A_n)$ be the set of fully commutative elements of the Coxeter group $W(A_n)$. Let $$ a_n(q)= \sum_{w \in W^c(A_n)} q^{l(w)} . $$ We compute $a_n(q)$.
We give explicit necessary and sufficient conditions for the abstract commensurability of certain families of 1-ended, hyperbolic groups, namely right-angled Coxeter groups defined by generalized theta-graphs and cycles of generalized theta-graphs, and geometric amalgams of free groups whose JSJ graphs are trees of diameter at most 4. We also show that if a geometric amalgam of free groups has JSJ graph a tree, then it is commensurable to a right-angled Coxeter group, and give an example of a geometric amalgam of free groups which is not quasi-isometric (hence not commensurable) to any group w…
We define and study generalized nil-Coxeter algebras associated to Coxeter groups. Motivated by a question of Coxeter (1957), we construct the first examples of such finite-dimensional algebras that are not the 'usual' nil-Coxeter algebras: a novel 2-parameter type $A$ family that we call $NC_A(n,d)$. We explore several combinatorial properties of $NC_A(n,d)$, including its Coxeter word basis, length function, and Hilbert-Poincare series, and show that the corresponding generalized Coxeter group is not a flat deformation of $NC_A(n,d)$. These algebras yield symmetric semigroup module categorie…
Let $(W,S)$ be an arbitrary Coxeter system. For each word $ω$ in the generators we define a partial order--called the {\sf $ω$-sorting order}--on the set of group elements $W_ω\subseteq W$ that occur as subwords of $ω$. We show that the $ω$-sorting order is a supersolvable join-distributive lattice and that it is strictly between the weak and Bruhat orders on the group. Moreover, the $ω$-sorting order is a "maximal lattice" in the sense that the addition of any collection of Bruhat covers results in a nonlattice. Along the way we define a class of structures called {\sf supersolvable antimatro…
In recent papers we have refined a conjecture of Lehrer and Solomon expressing the character of a finite Coxeter group $W$ acting on the $p$th graded component of its Orlik-Solomon algebra as a sum of characters induced from linear characters of centralizers of elements of $W$. Our refined conjecture relates the character above to a component of a decomposition of the regular character of $W$ related to Solomon's descent algebra of $W$. The refined conjecture has been proved for symmetric and dihedral groups, as well as finite Coxeter groups of rank three and four. In this paper, the second in…
There were defined by R. Shwartz OGS for non-abelian groups, as an interesting generalization of the basis of finite abelian groups. The definition of OGS states that that every element of a group has a unique presentation as a product of some powers of the OGS, in a specific given order. In case of the symmetric groups S_{n} there is a paper of R. Shwartz, which demonstrates a strong connection between the OGS and the standard Coxeter presentation of the symmetric group. The OGS presentation helps us to find the Coxeter length and the descent set of an arbitrary element of the symmetric group…
We consider both standard and twisted action of a (real) Coxeter group G on the complement M_G to the complexified reflection hyperplanes by combining the reflections with complex conjugation. We introduce a natural geometric class of special involutions in G and give explicit formulae which describe both actions on the total cohomology H(M_G,C) in terms of these involutions. As a corollary we prove that the corresponding twisted representation is regular only for the symmetric group S_n, the Weyl groups of type D_{2m+1}, E_6 and dihedral groups I_2 (2k+1) and that the standard action has no a…
We refine a conjecture by Lehrer and Solomon on the structure of the Orlik-Solomon algebra of a finite Coxeter group $W$ and relate it to the descent algebra of $W$. As a result, we claim that both the group algebra of $W$, as well as the Orlik-Solomon algebra of $W$ can be decomposed into a sum of induced one-dimensional representations of element centralizers, one for each conjugacy class of elements of $W$. We give a uniform proof of the claim for symmetric groups. In addition, we prove that a relative version of the conjecture holds for every pair $(W, W_L)$, where $W$ is arbitrary and $W_…
We study the Hurwitz action of the classical braid group on factorisations of a Coxeter element c in a well-generated complex reflection group W. It is well-known that the Hurwitz action is transitive on the set of reduced decompositions of c in reflections. Our main result is a similar property for the primitive factorisations of c, i.e. factorisations with only one factor which is not a reflection. The motivation is the search for a geometric proof of Chapoton's formula for the number of chains of given length in the non-crossing partitions lattice NCP_W. Our proof uses the properties of the…
We say a permutation $π=π_1π_2\cdotsπ_n$ in the symmetric group $\mathfrak{S}_n$ has a peak at index $i$ if $π_{i-1}<π_i>π_{i+1}$ and we let $P(π)=\{i \in \{1, 2, \ldots, n\} \, \vert \, \mbox{$i$ is a peak of $π$}\}$. Given a set $S$ of positive integers, we let $P (S; n)$ denote the subset of $\mathfrak{S}_n$ consisting of all permutations $π$, where $P(π) =S$. In 2013, Billey, Burdzy, and Sagan proved $|P(S;n)| = p(n)2^{n-\lvert S\rvert-1}$, where $p(n)$ is a polynomial of degree $\max(S)- 1$. In 2014, Castro-Velez et al. considered the Coxeter group of type $B_n$ as the group of signed per…
We consider a generalization of the fundamental theorem of finitely generated abelian groups for some non-abelian groups, which is called OGS. First, we consider the dihedral group, which is a non-abelian extension of an abelian group by an involution. Then, we focus on a special case, where the abelian group is cyclic, which is the two-generated Coxeter group I{2}(m). We mention interesting connections between the reduced Coxeter presentation and a particular OGS canonical presentation, which we call the standard OGS canonical presentation. These connections motivate us to offer a generalizat…
In recent papers we have refined a conjecture of Lehrer and Solomon expressing the characters of a finite Coxeter group $W$ afforded by the homogeneous components of its Orlik-Solomon algebra as sums of characters induced from linear characters of centralizers of elements of $W$. Our refined conjecture also relates the Orlik-Solomon characters above to the terms of a decomposition of the regular character of $W$ related to the descent algebra of $W$. A consequence of our conjecture is that both the regular character of $W$ and the character of the Orlik-Solomon algebra have parallel, graded de…
For symmetric groups we show that the p-canonical basis can be extended to a cell datum for the Iwahori-Hecke algebra H and that the two-sided p-cell preorder coincides with the Kazhdan-Lusztig two-sided cell preorder. Moreover, we show that left (or right) p-cells inside the same two-sided p-cell for Hecke algebras of finite crystallographic Coxeter systems are incomparable (Property A).
Given a graph $Γ$, its auxiliary \emph{square-graph} $\square(Γ)$ is the graph whose vertices are the non-edges of $Γ$ and whose edges are the pairs of non-edges which induce a square (i.e., a $4$-cycle) in $Γ$. We determine the threshold edge-probability $p=p_c(n)$ at which the Erd{\H o}s--Rényi random graph $Γ=Γ_{n,p}$ begins to asymptotically almost surely have a square-graph with a connected component whose squares together cover all the vertices of $Γ_{n,p}$. We show $p_c(n)=\sqrt{\sqrt{6}-2}/\sqrt{n}$, a polylogarithmic improvement on earlier bounds on $p_c(n)$ due to Hagen and the autho…
When W is a finite reflection group, the noncrossing partition lattice NCP_W of type W is a rich combinatorial object, extending the notion of noncrossing partitions of an n-gon. A formula (for which the only known proofs are case-by-case) expresses the number of multichains of a given length in NCP_W as a generalised Fuss-Catalan number, depending on the invariant degrees of W. We describe how to understand some specifications of this formula in a case-free way, using an interpretation of the chains of NCP_W as fibers of a Lyashko-Looijenga covering (LL), constructed from the geometry of the …
Let $A_L$ be the right-angled Artin group associated to a finite flag complex $L$. We show that the amenable category of $A_L$ equals the virtual cohomological dimension of the right-angled Coxeter group $W_L$. In particular, right-angled Artin groups satisfy a question of Capovilla--Löh--Moraschini proposing an inequality between the amenable category and Farber's topological complexity.
This memoir constitutes the author's PhD thesis at Cornell University. It serves both as an expository work and as a description of new research. At the heart of the memoir, we introduce and study a poset $NC^{(k)}(W)$ for each finite Coxeter group $W$ and for each positive integer $k$. When $k=1$, our definition coincides with the generalized noncrossing partitions introduced by Brady-Watt and Bessis. When $W$ is the symmetric group, we obtain the poset of classical $k$-divisible noncrossing partitions, first studied by Edelman. Along the way, we include a comprehensive introduction to relate…
The limit weak order on an affine Weyl group was introduced by Lam and Pylyavskyy in their study of total positivity for loop groups. They showed that in the case of the affine symmetric group the minimal elements of this poset coincide with the infinite fully commutative reduced words and with infinite powers of Coxeter elements. We answer several open problems raised there by classifying minimal elements in all affine types and relating these elements to the classes of fully commutative and Coxeter elements. Interestingly, the infinite fully commutative elements correspond to the minuscule a…
In this paper, we make the case that Clifford algebra is the natural framework for root systems and reflection groups, as well as related groups such as the conformal and modular groups: The metric that exists on these spaces can always be used to construct the corresponding Clifford algebra. Via the Cartan-Dieudonné theorem all the transformations of interest can be written as products of reflections and thus via `sandwiching' with Clifford algebra multivectors. These multivector groups can be used to perform concrete calculations in different groups, e.g. the various types of polyhedral grou…
For $d=4, 5, 6, 7, 8$, we exhibit examples of $\mathrm{AdS}^{d,1}$ strictly GHC-regular groups which are not quasi-isometric to the hyperbolic space $\mathbb{H}^d$, nor to any symmetric space. This provides a negative answer to Question 5.2 in [9A12] and disproves Conjecture 8.11 of Barbot-Mérigot [BM12]. We construct those examples using the Tits representation of well-chosen Coxeter groups. On the way, we give an alternative proof of Moussong's hyperbolicity criterion [Mou88] for Coxeter groups built on Danciger-Guéritaud-Kassel [DGK17] and find examples of Coxeter groups $W$ such that the s…
We introduce a new statistic on the hyperoctahedral groups (Coxeter groups of type B), and give a conjectural formula for its signed distributions over arbitrary descent classes. The statistic is analogous to the classical Coxeter length function, and features a parity condition. For descent classes which are singletons the conjectured formula gives the Poincaré polynomials of the varieties of symmetric matrices of fixed rank. For several descent classes we prove the conjectural formula. For this we construct suitable "supporting sets" for the relevant generating functions. We prove cancellati…
There are well known relations between braid groups and symmetric groups, between Artin-Briskorn braid groups and Coxeter groups. Inverse braid monoid the same way is related to the inverse symmetric monoid. In the paper we show that similar relations exist between the inverse braid monoid of type $B$ and the inverse reflection monoid of type $B$. This gives a presentation of the last monoid.
We investigate a certain linear combination $K(\vec{x})=K(a;b,c,d;e,f,g)$ of two Saalschutzian hypergeometric series of type ${_4}F_3(1)$. We first show that $K(a;b,c,d;e,f,g)$ is invariant under the action of a certain matrix group $G_K$, isomorphic to the symmetric group $S_6$, acting on the affine hyperplane $V=\{(a,b,c,d,e,f,g)\in\Bbb C^7\colon e+f+g-a-b-c-d=1\}$. We further develop an algebra of three-term relations for $K(a;b,c,d;e,f,g)$. We show that, for any three elements $μ_1,μ_2,μ_3$ of a certain matrix group $M_K$, isomorphic to the Coxeter group $W(D_6)$ (of order 23040), and cont…
Given a prime, alternating link diagram, we build a special cover of the link complement whose degree is bounded by a factorial function of the crossing number. It follows that a subgroup of the link group of that index embeds into right-angled Artin and Coxeter groups. Corollaries of this result include a quantification of residual finiteness, control of the growth of Betti numbers in covers, and an explicit bound on the rank of a Z-module on which the link group acts faithfully.
In theory of Coxeter groups, bigrassmannian elements are well known as elements which have precisely one left descent and precisely one right descent. In this article, we prove formulas on enumeration of bigrassmannian permutations weakly below a permutation in Bruhat order in the symmetric groups. For the proof, we use equivalent characterizations of bigrassmannian permutations by Lascoux-Schutzenberger and Reading.
