Pride groups, or ``groups given by presentations in which each defining relator involves at most two types of generators'', include Coxeter groups, Artin groups, triangles of groups, and Vinberg's groups defined by periodic paired relations. We show that every non-spherical Pride group that is not a triangle of groups satisfies the Tits alternative.
In this note we establish the existence of all Curtis-Tits groups and Phan groups with $3$-spherical diagram as classified previously and investigate some of their geometric and group theoretic properties. Whereas it is known that orientable Curtis-Tits groups with spherical or non-spherical and non-affine diagram are almost simple, we show that non-orientable Curtis-Tits groups are acylindrically hyperbolic and therefore have infinitely many infinite-index normal subgroups. However, we also provide concrete examples of non-orientable Curtis-Tits groups whose quotients are finite simple groups…
The main result of this paper (Theorem B) asserts that under natural conditions, any weakly-split Tits system in G(k), G a reductive or quasi-reductive group over an arbitrary field k, is the standard one.
We give a complete classification of conjugacy stable parabolic subgroups of Artin-Tits groups of spherical type. This answers a question posed by Ivan Marin and generalizes a theorem obtained by Juan González-Meneses in the specific case of Artin braid groups.
We classify all non-collapsing Curtis-Tits and Phan amalgams with $3$-spherical diagram over all fields. In particular, we show that amalgams with spherical diagram are unique, a result required by the classification of finite simple groups. We give a simple condition on the amalgam which is necessary and sufficient for it to arise from a group of Kac-Moody type. This also yields a definition of a large class of groups of Kac-Moody type in terms of a finite presentation.
We prove that, for any irreducible Artin-Tits group of spherical type $G$, the quotient of $G$ by its center is acylindrically hyperbolic. This is achieved by studying the additional length graph associated to the classical Garside structure on $G$, and constructing a specific element $x_G$ of $G/Z(G)$ whose action on the graph is loxodromic and WPD in the sense of Bestvina-Fujiwara; following Osin, this implies acylindrical hyperbolicity. Finally, we prove that "generic" elements of $G$ act loxodromically, where the word "generic" can be understood in either of the two common usages: as a res…
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 …
Triangles of groups have been introduced by Gersten and Stallings. They are, roughly speaking, a generalisation of the amalgamated free product of two groups and occur in the framework of Corson diagrams. First, we prove an intersection theorem for Corson diagrams. Then, we focus on triangles of groups. It has been shown by Howie and Kopteva that the colimit of a hyperbolic triangle of groups contains a non-abelian free subgroup. We give two natural conditions, each of which ensures that the colimit of a non-spherical triangle of groups either contains a non-abelian free subgroup or is virtual…
We show the analogue of Muhlherr's [Coxeter groups in Coxeter groups, Finite Geom. and Combinatorics, Cambridge Univ. Press (1993), 277-287] for Artin-Tits monoids, and for Artin-Tits groups of spherical type. That is, the submonoid (resp. subgroup) of an Artin-Tits monoid (resp. group of spherical type) induced by an admissible partition of the Coxeter graph is an Artin-Tits monoid (resp. group). This generalizes and unifies the situation of the submonoid (resp. subgroup) of fixed elements of an Artin-Tits monoid (resp. group of spherical type) under the action of graph automorphisms, and the…
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.
Seeking for a converse to a well-known theorem by Borel-Tits, we address the question whether the group of rational points G(k) of an anisotropic reductive k-group may admit a split spherical BN-pair. We show that if k is a perfect field or a local field, then such a BN-pair must be virtually trivial. We also consider arbitrary compact groups and show that the only abstract BN-pairs they can admit are spherical, and even virtually trivial provided they are split.
Let $(A_S,S)$ be an Artin-Tits and $X$ a subset of $S$ ; denote by $A_X$ the subgroup of $A_S$ generated by $X$. When $A_S$ is of spherical type, we prove that the normalizer and the commensurator of $A_X$ in $A_S$ are equal and are the product of $A_X$ by the quasi-centralizer of $A_X$ in $A_S$. Looking to the associated monoids $A_S^+$ and $A_X^+$, we describe the quasi-centralizer of $A_X^+$ in $A_S^+$ thanks to results in Coxeter groups. These two results generalize earlier results of Paris. Finaly, we compare, in the spherical case, the normalizer of a parabolic subgroup in the Artin-Tits…
We show that, in an Artin-Tits group of spherical type, the intersection of two parabolic subgroups is a parabolic subgroup. Moreover, we show that the set of parabolic subgroups forms a lattice with respect to inclusion. This extends to all Artin-Tits groups of spherical type a result that was previously known for braid groups. To obtain the above results, we show that every element in an Artin-Tits group of spherical type admits a unique minimal parabolic subgroup containing it. Also, the subgroup associated to an element coincides with the subgroup associated to any of its powers or roots. …
Lawrence-Krammer representations are an important family of linear representations of Artin-Tits groups of small type, which are known, under some assumptions on the parameters, to be faithful when the type is spherical (or more generally when they are restricted to the Artin-Tits monoid) and irreducible when the type is connected. Here, we investigate an analogue of these representations --- introduced by Digne in the spherical cases --- for every Artin-Tits monoid that appears as the submonoid of fixed points of an Artin-Tits monoid of small type under a group of graph automorphisms, and for…
A conjecture of Dehornoy claims that, given a presentation of an Artin-Tits group, every word that represents the identity can be transformed into the trivial word using the braid relations, together with certain rules (between pairs of words that are not both positive) that can be derived directly from the braid relations, as well as free reduction, but without introducing trivial factors $ss^{-1} $ or $s^{-1} s$. This conjecture is known to be true for Artin-Tits groups of spherical type or of FC type. We prove the conjecture for Artin--Tits groups of sufficiently large type.
Consider an infinite homogeneous tree $T_n$ of valence $n+1$, its group $Aut(T_n)$ of automorphisms, and the group $Hie(T_n)$ of its spheromorphisms (hierarchomorphisms), i.~e., the group of homeomorphisms of the boundary of $T_n$ that locally coincide with transformations defined by automorphisms. We show that the subgroup $Aut(T_n)$ is spherical in $Hie(T_n)$, i.~e., any irreducible unitary representation of $Hie(T_n)$ contains at most one $Aut(T_n)$-fixed vector. We present a combinatorial description of the space of double cosets of $Hie(T_n)$ with respect to $Aut(T_n)$ and construct a 'ne…
In this paper we show the statement in the title. To any Garside group of finite type, Wiest and the author associated a hyperbolic graph called the \emph{additional length graph} and they used it to show that central quotients of Artin-Tits groups of spherical type are acylindrically hyperbolic. In general, a euclidean Artin-Tits group is not \emph{a priori} a Garside group but McCammond and Sulway have shown that it embeds into an \emph{infinite-type} Garside group which they call a \emph{crystallographic Garside group}. We associate a \emph{hyperbolic} additional length graph to this crysta…
We prove the following rank rigidity result for proper CAT(0) spaces with one-dimensional Tits boundaries: Let $Γ$ be a group acting properly discontinuously, cocompactly, and by isometries on such a space $X$. If the Tits diameter of $\partial X$ equals $π$ and $Γ$ does not act minimally on $\partial X$, then $\partial X$ is a spherical building or a spherical join. If $X$ is also geodesically complete, then $X$ is a Euclidean building, higher rank symmetric space, or a nontrivial product. Much of the proof, which involves finding a Tits-closed convex building-like subset of $\partial X$, doe…
Lawrence-Krammer representations (LK-representations for short) are linear representations of Artin-Tits groups of small type, which are of importance since they are known to be faithful when the type is spherical, or more generally when restricted to the monoid. If the construction is essentially unique for a given small and spherical type, the structure of the set of LK-representations for a given small type is not understood in general. Another important question is to ask if there exists an analogue of this construction in the non-small cases ; a first answer is given in [Digne, On the lin…
The \emph{graph of irreducible parabolic subgroups} is a combinatorial object associated to an Artin-Tits group $A$ defined so as to coincide with the curve graph of the $(n+1)$-times punctured disk when $A$ is Artin's braid group on $(n+1)$ strands. In this case, it is a hyperbolic graph, by the celebrated Masur-Minsky's theorem. Hyperbolicity for more general Artin-Tits groups is an important open question. In this paper, we give a partial affirmative answer. For $n\geqslant 3$, we prove that the graph of irreducible parabolic subgroups associated to the Artin-Tits group of spherical type $B…
Non-positively curved spaces admitting a cocompact isometric action of an amenable group are investigated. A classification is established under the assumption that there is no global fixed point at infinity under the full isometry group. The visual boundary is then a spherical building. When the ambient space is geodesically complete, it must be a product of flats, symmetric spaces, biregular trees and Bruhat--Tits buildings. We provide moreover a sufficient condition for a spherical building arising as the visual boundary of a proper CAT(0) space to be Moufang, and deduce that an irreducible…
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.
A Garside monoid is a cancellative monoid with a finite lattice generating set; a Garside group is the group of fractions of a Garside monoid. The family of Garside groups contains the Artin-Tits groups of spherical type. We generalise the well-known notion of a parabolic subgroup of an Artin-Tits group into that of a parabolic subgroup of a Garside group. We also define the more general notion of a Garside subgroup of a Garside group, which is related to the notion of LCM-homomorphisms between Artin-Tits groups. We prove that most of the properties of parabolic subgroups extend to this subgro…
The minimal standardizer of a curve system on a punctured disk is the minimal braid that transforms it into a system formed only by round curves. We give an algorithm to compute it in a geometrical way. Then, we generalize this problem algebraically to parabolic subgroups of Artin-Tits groups of spherical type and we show that, to compute the minimal standardizer of a parabolic subgroup, it suffices to compute the $pn$-normal form of a particular central element.
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 …
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…
We prove, for any infinite field k, that any virtually trivial split spherical BN-pair in the group G(k) of k-rational points of a reductive k-group G is already trivial. We then inspect the case when G is k-anisotropic and show that in many situations G(k) admits no non-trivial split spherical BN-pairs. This improves results and contributes to a conjecture of Caprace and Marquis, which can be viewed as a converse to a well-known result of Borel and Tits.
Buildings have been introduced by J. Tits in order to study semi-simple algebraic groups from a geometrical point of view. One of the most important results in the theory of buildings is the classification of irreducible spherical buildings of rank at least 3. About 25 years ago, M. Ronan and J. Tits defined the class of twin buildings, which generalize spherical buildings in a natural way. The motivation of their definition is provided by the theory of Kac-Moody groups. A 2-spherical twin building is uniquely determined by its local structure in almost all cases: The so-called foundation is t…
This paper shows how to construct coherent presentations (presentations by generators, relations and relations among relations) of monoids admitting a right-noetherian Garside family. Thereby, it resolves the question of finding a unifying generalisation of the following two distinct extensions of construction of coherent presentations for spherical Artin-Tits monoids: to general Artin-Tits monoids, and to Garside monoids. The result is applied to some monoids which are neither Artin-Tits nor Garside.
We show that the group $PSL(2,R)$ is a spherical subgroup in the group of $C^3$-diffeomorphisms of the circle. Also, the group of automorphisms of a Bruhat--Tits tree is a spherical subgroup in the group of hierarchomorphisms of the tree.
Scissors automorphism groups II: Solomon-Tits theorems
University of Toronto Scarborough(多伦多大学士嘉堡分校);University of Aberdeen(阿伯丁大学);Binghamton University(宾汉姆顿大学);Purdue University(普渡大学);Universität Münster(明斯特大学)
Let (W,S) be a Coxeter system of finite rank (ie |S| is finite) and let A be the associated Coxeter (or Davis) complex. We study chains of pairwise parallel walls in A using Tits' bilinear form associated to the standard root system of (W,S). As an application, we prove the strong parallel wall conjecture of G Niblo and L Reeves [J Group Theory 6 (2003) 399--413]. This allows to prove finiteness of the number of conjugacy classes of certain one-ended subgroups of W, which yields in turn the determination of all co-Hopfian Coxeter groups of 2--spherical type.
We introduce structures which model quotients of buildings by type-preserving group actions. These structures, which we call W-groupoids for W a Coxeter group, generalize Bruhat decompositions, chambers systems of type M, Tits amalgams, and buildings themselves. We define the fundamental group of a W-groupoid, and characterize buildings as connected simply connected W-groupoids. We give a brief outline of covering theory of W-groupoids, which produces buildings as universal covers equipped with an action of the fundamental group. The local-to-global theorem of Tits concerning spherical 3-resid…
In the present paper we define dual monoids for all Artin-Tits groups and we prove that for the type $\tilde A_n$ we get a (quasi)-Garside structure. Such a structure provides normal forms for the Artin-Tits group elements and allows to solve some questions such as to determine the centralizer of a power of the Coxeter element in the Artin-Tits group. More precisely, if $W$ is a Coxeter group, one can consider the length $l_R$ on $W$ with respect to the generating set $R$ consisting of all reflections. Let $c$ be a Coxeter element in $W$ and let $P_c$ be the set of elements $p\in W$ such that …
Garside groups are a natural lattice-theoretic generalisation of the braid groups and spherical type Artin--Tits groups. Here we show that the class of Garside groups is closed under some free products with cyclic amalgamated subgroups. We deduce that every tree product of infinite cyclic groups is a Garside group. Moreover, we study those cyclic HNN extensions of Garside groups that are Garside groups as well. Using a theorem of Pietrowski, we conclude this paper by stating that a non-cyclic one-relator group is Garside if and only if its centre is nontrivial.
For any root system and any commutative ring we give a relatively simple presentation of a group related to its Steinberg group St. This includes the case of infinite root systems used in Kac-Moody theory, for which the Steinberg group was defined by Tits and Morita-Rehmann. In most cases our group equals St, giving a presentation with many advantages over the usual presentation of St. This equality holds for all spherical root systems, all irreducible affine root systems of rank>2, and all 3-spherical root systems. When the coefficient ring satisfies a minor condition, the last condition can …
Let $\mathcal{G}$ be a Kac-Moody group functor in the sense of Tits, with associated Coxeter system $(W,S)$. For any field $F$, the group $\mathcal{G}(F)$ is finitely generated iff $F$ is finite. We are interested in the question when $G = \mathcal{G}(\mathbb{F}_q)$ is finitely presented. If $(W,S)$ is 2-spherical, it is well known that this is "almost always" the case. It is conjectured that $G$ is never finitely presented if $(W,S)$ is not 2-spherical (which means that there exist $s,t \in S$ with $|st| = \infty$), which so far (to the best of our knowledge) has only been proved for the type…
Given a Chevalley group $\mathcal{G}$ of classical type and a Borel subgroup $\mathcal{B} \subseteq \mathcal{G}$, we compute the $Σ$-invariants of the $S$-arithmetic groups $\mathcal{B}(\mathbb{Z}[1/N])$, where $N$ is a product of large enough primes. To this end, we let $\mathcal{B}(\mathbb{Z}[1/N])$ act on a Euclidean building $X$ that is given by the product of Bruhat--Tits buildings $X_p$ associated to $\mathcal{G}$, where $p$ runs over the primes dividing $N$. In the course of the proof we introduce necessary and sufficient conditions for convex functions on $\mbox{CAT(0)}$-spaces to be c…
We prove that a two-spherical split Kac-Moody group over a local field naturally provides a topological twin building in the sense of Kramer. This existence result and the local-to-global principle for twin building topologies combined with the theory of Moufang foundations as introduced and studied by Mühlherr, Ronan, and Tits allows one to immediately obtain a classification of two-spherical split Moufang topological twin buildings whose underlying Coxeter diagram contains no loop and no isolated vertices.
We study the rational permutation braids, that is the elements of an Artin-Tits group of spherical type which can be written $x^{-1} y$ where $x$ and $y$ are prefixes of the Garside element of the braid monoid. We give a geometric characterization of these braids in type $A_n$ and $B_n$ and then show that in spherical types different from $D_n$ the simple elements of the dual braid monoid (for arbitrary choice of Coxeter element) embedded in the braid group are rational permutation braids (we conjecture this to hold also in type $D_n$).This property implies positivity properties of the polynom…
Let $k$ be a nonperfect field of characteristic $2$. Let $G$ be a $k$-split simple algebraic group of type $E_6$ (or $G_2$) defined over $k$. In this paper, we present the first examples of nonabelian non-$G$-completely reducible $k$-subgroups of $G$ which are $G$-completely reducible over $k$. Our construction is based on that of subgroups of $G$ acting non-separably on the unipotent radical of a proper parabolic subgroup of $G$ in our previous work. We also present examples with the same property for a non-connected reductive group $G$. Along the way, several general results concerning compl…
Let $G$ be a reductive algebraic group---possibly non-connected---over a field $k$ and let $H$ be a subgroup of $G$. If $G= GL_n$ then there is a degeneration process for obtaining from $H$ a completely reducible subgroup $H'$ of $G$; one takes a limit of $H$ along a cocharacter of $G$ in an appropriate sense. We generalise this idea to arbitrary reductive $G$ using the notion of $G$-complete reducibility and results from geometric invariant theory over non-algebraically closed fields due to the authors and Herpel. Our construction produces a $G$-completely reducible subgroup $H'$ of $G$, uniq…