Explicit fibrant replacement for discrete $G$-spectra

Our main result provides necessary and sufficient conditions for a finitelygenerated subgroup of GLn(C), n > 0, to have finite virtual cohomological dimension. A group has finite virtual cohomological dimension (VCD) if it has a subgroup of finite index which has finite cohomological dimension; this dimension is, in fact, the same for all torsion-free subgroups of finite index. It is, of course, necessary for a group r with VCD(T) Q), is independent of the choice of solvable series; thus, for a polycyclic group r, h(T) is the number of infinite factors in a normal series with cyclic quotients. We announce our main result.

Our main result provides necessary and sufficient conditions for a finitelygenerated subgroup of GLn(C), n > 0, to have finite virtual cohomological dimension. A group has finite virtual cohomological dimension (VCD) if it has a subgroup of finite index which has finite cohomological dimension; this dimension is, in fact, the same for all torsion-free subgroups of finite index. It is, of course, necessary for a group r with VCD(T) Q), is independent of the choice of solvable series; thus, for a polycyclic group r, h(T) is the number of infinite factors in a normal series with cyclic quotients. We announce our main result.

When is group cohomology finitary?

This is a report on our work during the last few years on extending the Bieri-Neumann-Strebel-Renz theory of “geometric invariants” of groups to a theory of group actions on non-positively curved (= CAT(0)) spaces. With the exception of Theorem 8, which is proved here, and the related material in §5.3, proofs of all our theorems can be found in our papers [BG I ] (controlled connectivity and openness results), [BG II ] (the geometric invariants) and [BG III ] ( SL 2 actions on the hyperbolic plane). An earlier expository paper [BG 98] is also relevant. The geometric invariants we recall the “geometric” or “Σ-” invariants of groups developed during the 1980's by Bieri, Neumann, Strebel and Renz (abbrev. BNSR); see [BNS 87], [BR 88], [Re 88]. We set things out in a way which leads directly to generalizations which were not anticipated in the original literature. Let G be a group of type F n , n ≥ 1. Let X be a contractible G -CW complex which is either (a) free with cocompact n -skeleton, or (b) properly discontinuous and cocompact. Case (a) exists by the definition of F n ; Case (b) is often useful but can only exist when G has finite virtual cohomological dimension. Controlled connectivity Let χ : G → ℝ be a non-zero character, i.e., a homomorphism to the additive group of real numbers. Reinterpret ℝ as the group of translations, Transl, of the Euclidean line, and thus reinterpret χ as an action of G on by translations.

We study the algebraic structure of the outer automorphism group of a general right-angled Artin group. We show that this group is virtually torsion-free and has finite virtual cohomological dimension. This generalizes results proved earlier by the authors and Crisp for 2-dimensional right-angled Artin groups.

The homotopy theory of infinity-operads is defined by extending Joyal's homotopy theory of infinity-categories to the category of dendroidal sets. We prove that the category of dendroidal sets is endowed with a model category structure whose fibrant objects are the infinity-operads (i.e. dendroidal inner Kan complexes). This extends the theory of infinity-categories in the sense that the Joyal model category structure on simplicial sets whose fibrant objects are the infinity-categories is recovered from the model category structure on dendroidal sets by simply slicing over the point.

In this note we prove that Reedy fibrant Segal categories are fibrant objects in the model category structure S C c \mathcal {SC}_c . Combining this result with a previous one, we thus have that the fibrant objects are precisely the Reedy fibrant Segal categories. We also show that the analogous result holds for Segal categories that are fibrant in the projective model structure on simplicial spaces, considered as objects in the model structure S C f \mathcal {SC}_f .

Let w be a group-word. Suppose that the set of all w -values in a profinite group G is contained in a union of countably many subgroups. It is natural to ask in what way the structure of the verbal subgroup w(G) depends on the properties of the covering subgroups. The present article is a survey of recent results related to that question. In particular we survey results on finite and countable coverings of word-values (mostly commutators) by procyclic, abelian, nilpotent, and soluble subgroups, as well as subgroups with finiteness conditions. The last section of the paper is devoted to relation of the described results with Hall's problem on conciseness of group-words.

In this paper, we study properties of maps between fibrant objects in model categories.We give a characterization of weak equivalences between fibrant objects.If every object of a model category is fibrant, then we give a simple description of a set of generating cofibrations.We show that to construct such a model structure it is enough to check some relatively simple conditions.

A profinite group G is said to have cohomological dimension at most n if Hr (G, A) is zero for all r > n and all discrete Z-torsion G-modules A. The groups of co omological dimension at most 1 are just the projective groups. Among other important groups which have finite cohomological dimension are the torsion-free profinite groups of finite rank and certain Galois groups Gal (K/k), where K is either a separable closure of k or the subfield of a separable closure generated by all finite Galois extensions of p-power degree.

Certain algebraic invariants of the integral group ring ZG of a group G were introduced and investigated in relation to the problem of extending the Farrell-Tate cohomology, which is defined for the class of groups of finite virtual cohomological dimension. It turns out that the finiteness of these invariants of a group G implies the existence of a generalized Farrell-Tate cohomology for G which is computed via complete resolutions. In this article we present these algebraic invariants and their basic properties and discuss their relationship to the generalized Farrell-Tate cohomology. In addition we present the status of conjecture which claims that the finiteness of these invariants of a group G is equivalent to the existence of a finite dimensional model for EG, the classifying space for proper actions.

We describe degree zero mod-p complete cohomology modulo its radical in purely group-theoretic terms, for members of a class of groups that includes all groups of finite virtual cohomological dimension. We give examples to show that our description does not apply to all discrete groups. We also give examples of discrete groups to which Quillen's description of the ordinary mod-p cohomology ring (up to F-isomorphism) does not apply.

Let $G$ be an infinite discrete group. A classifying space for proper actions\nof $G$ is a proper $G$-CW-complex $X$ such that the fixed point sets $X^H$ are\ncontractible for all finite subgroups $H$ of $G$. In this paper we consider the\nstable analogue of the classifying space for proper actions in the category of\nproper $G$-spectra and study its finiteness properties. We investigate when $G$\nadmits a stable classifying space for proper actions that is finite or of\nfinite type and relate these conditions to the compactness of the sphere\nspectrum in the homotopy category of proper $G$-spectra and to classical\nfiniteness properties of the Weyl groups of finite subgroups of $G$. Finally,\nif the group $G$ is virtually torsion-free we also show that the smallest\npossible dimension of a stable classifying space for proper actions coincides\nwith the virtual cohomological dimension of $G$, thus providing the first\ngeometric interpretation of the virtual cohomological dimension of a group.\n

We describe an algorithm to find the virtual cohomological dimension of the automorphism group of a right-angled Artin group. The algorithm works in the relative setting; in particular it also applies to untwisted automorphism groups and basis-conjugating automorphism groups. The main new tool is the construction of free abelian subgroups of certain Fouxe-Rabinovitch groups of rank equal to their virtual cohomological dimension, generalizing a result of Meucci in the setting of free groups.

Let C be an arbitrary Grothendieck site. The purpose of this note is to show that, with the closed model structure on the category S Pre(C) of simplicial presheaves in hand, it is a relatively simple matter to show that the category S Pre(C)stab of presheaves of spectra (of simplicial sets) satisfies the axioms for a closed model category, giving rise to a stable homotopy theory for simplicial presheaves. The proof is modelled on the corresponding result for simplicial sets which is given in [1], and makes direct use of their Theorem A.7.This result gives a precise description of the associated stable homotopy category Ho(S Pre(C))stab, according to well known results of Quillen [6]. One will recall, however, that it is preferable to have several different descriptions of the stable homotopy category, for the construction of smash products and the like.