No Uncountable Polish Group Can be a Right-Angled Artin Group

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 sub- groups 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. There are many analogies and interconnections between the theories of right- angled Artin groups on one hand and mapping class groups on the other hand. For instance, by the work of Crisp and Wiest (13), the work of Koberda (27), and the work of the first two authors with Mangahas (12), there is an abundance of injective homomorphisms from right-angled Artin groups to mapping class groups. Also, the last two authors proved (30) that any two elements of the pure braid group either generate a free group or a free abelian group—a property shared by all right-angled Artin groups (4, Theorem 1.2). We are thus led to ask to what extent mapping class groups are the same as right-angled Artin groups. It is straightforward to see that most mapping class groups are not isomorphic to right-angled Artin groups, for instance because right-angled Artin groups are torsion free. On the other hand, mapping class groups have finite-index sub- groups that are torsion free, and so this leaves open the possibility that mapping class groups are abstractly commensurable to right-angled Artin groups, that is, that they have isomorphic finite-index subgroups. We prove that, aside from a small number of exceptions, this is not the case. We also extend this result to several classes of groups related to mapping class groups. We start by recalling some definitions. To a finite graph , we can associate a right-angled Artin grou p: this is the group with one generator for each vertex of , and one defin ing relator for each edge, namely, the commutator of the two generators corresponding to the endpoints. Let Sg,n denote a closed, connected, orientable surface of genus g with n marked points. The mapping class group Mod(Sg,n) is the group of homotopy classes of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of Sg,n preserving the set of marked points. As discussed in Koberda's paper (27, Theorem 1.5), no finite-index subgroup of Mod(Sg,n) injects into a right-angled Artin group if g ≥ 2 and (g,n) 6 (2,0); see

Let (X,≤) be a partially ordered set (in short, a poset). The automorphism group Aut (X,≤) is the group of all permutations g of X such that x ≤ y if and only if xg ≤ yg for all x,y∈X. We say that (X,≤) is sharply transitive if Aut(X,≤) is sharply transitive on X, that is, for x,y∈X there exists a unique g∈Aut(X,≤) with y = xg. Sharply transitive totally ordered sets have been studied by Ohkuma[4, 5], Glass, Gurevich, Holland and Shelah [3] (see also [2] and [6]). Whereas the only countable sharply transitive totally ordered set is the set of integers, there are a great variety of countable sharply transitive posets. Amongst other results, in [1] the author showed that there are countably many non-isomorphic sharply transitive posets whose automorphism group is infinite cyclic (and also gave a full description of those), whereas there are 2N0 non-isomorphic sharply transitive posets whose automorphism group is isomorphic to the additive group of the rational numbers. This suggests also that one should consider the analogous problem for free abelian groups. The purpose of this note is to show that whenever G is a countable free abelian group then there exists a sharply transitive poset whose automorphism group is isomorphic to G, and that there are already 2N0 non-isomorphic sharply transitive posets whose automorphism group is the free abelian group of rank 2.

We would like to build Abelian groups (or R-modules) which on the one hand are quite free, say ℵω+1-free, and on the other hand are complicated in a suitable sense. We choose as our test problem one having no nontrivial homomorphism to ℤ (known classically for ℵ1-free, recently for ℵn-free). We succeed to prove the existence of even $${\aleph _{{\omega _1} \cdot n}}$$ -free ones. This requires building n-dimensional black boxes, which are quite free. This combinatorics is of self interest and we believe will be useful also for other purposes. On the other hand, modulo suitable large cardinals, we prove that it is consistent that every $${\aleph _{{\omega _1} \cdot \omega }}$$ -free Abelian group has non-trivial homomorphisms to ℤ.

Several authors have recently studied the problem of finding circumstances under which the amenability of a semigroup is inherited by a subsemigroup. It is known ([2] and [3]) that subgroups of an amenable group are amenable, but that in general subsemigroups of an amenable semigroup are not. We show here that subsemigroups of an amenbable group need not be amenable. Frey proved in [4] that subsemigroups of a group inherit amenability and the group contains no copy of the free semigroup S on two generators (S is not amenable). The problem is discussed in detail in [51. It is known [11 that a group generated by a copy of S contained in it need not be free; the question is whether it can be far enough from free to be amenable. Since solvable groups are amenable [6], our claim that subsemigroups of amenable groups need not be amenable will be established we can embed S in a solvable group. We proceed to do this. Granirer conjectured in his review [MR 35 #3423] of Wilde and Witz [7] that a group is amenable and it contains no copy of S. It will follow that the only if part of this conjecture is quite false. Let B be the free additive abelian group on the family of generators {b(m, n) }, m, n integers. Any permutation of these generators induces an automorphism of B. Let x and y be the automorphisms induced by b(m, n)F->b(m+1, n) and b(m, n)'->b(m, n+1), respectively. It is easy to see that the subgroup C of Aut B generated by x and y is the free abelian group on the generators x, y. We write C additively, and we indicate the action of an element c of C on an element b of B by be. Let be the normal product of B by C. consists of pairs [c, b] and the multiplication is given by -[c, b1i [c, b] [cl+c, b1+b]. c1->[c, 0], bF-*[O, b] are embeddings of C, B respectively into G, and B is thus a normal abelian subgroup with quotient G/B-C. Hence, is solvable and in fact the second derived group G of is trivial. The same holds for every subgroup of G. Now, let s= [x, b(O, 0)] and t= [y, b(0, 0)].

Long colimits of topological groups II: Free groups and vector spaces

For a one-ended right-angled Artin group, we give an explicit description of its JSJ tree of cylinders over infinite cyclic subgroups in terms of its defining graph. This is then used to classify certain right-angled Artin groups up to quasi-isometry. In particular, we show that if two right-angled Artin groups are quasi-isometric, then their JSJ trees of cylinders are weakly equivalent. Although the converse to this is not generally true, we define quasi-isometry invariants known as stretch factors that can distinguish quasi-isometry classes of RAAGs with weakly equivalence JSJ trees of cylinders. We then show that for many right-angled Artin groups, being weakly equivalent and having matching stretch factors is a complete quasi-isometry invariant.

Consider the mapping class group Mod g,p of a surface Σ g,p of genus g with p punctures, and a finite collection {f1, . . . , fk} of mapping classes, each of which is either a Dehn twist about a simple closed curve or a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism supported on a connected subsurface. In this paper we prove that for all sufficiently large N, the mapping classes $${\{f_1^N,\ldots,f_k^N\}}$$ generate a right-angled Artin group. The right-angled Artin group which they generate can be determined from the combinatorial topology of the mapping classes themselves. When {f1, . . . , fk} are arbitrary mapping classes, we show that sufficiently large powers of these mapping classes generate a group which embeds in a right-angled Artin group in a controlled way. We establish some analogous results for real and complex hyperbolic manifolds. We also discuss the unsolvability of the isomorphism problem for finitely generated subgroups of Mod g,p , and recover the fact that the isomorphism problem for right-angled Artin groups is solvable. We thus characterize the isomorphism type of many naturally occurring subgroups of Mod g,p .

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 of infinite countable amenable groups over the same defining graph. Second, when G is nonabelian, the automorphism group of the universal cover of the Salvetti complex of G always contains infinitely generated (non-uniform) lattices.

We give a complete description of the topological spaces X such that the free abelian topological group A(X) embeds into the free abelian topological group A(I) on the closed unit interval. In particular, the free abelian topological group A(X) on any finite-dimensional compact metrizable space X embeds into A(I). To obtain our description, we study similar embeddings of the free locally convex spaces and continuous surjections between the spaces of continuous functions with the pointwise topology. Proofs are based on the classical Kolmogorov's Superposition Theorem.

Computable topological abelian groups

We investigate effective properties of uncountable free abelian groups. We show that identifying free abelian groups and constructing bases for such groups is often computationally hard, depending on the cardinality. For example, we show, under the assumption $V=L$, that there is a first-order definable free abelian group with no first-order definable basis.

Let T be an abelian group and λ an uncountable regular cardinal. The question of whether there is a λ-universal group U among all torsion-free abelian groups G of cardinality less than or equal to λ satisfying Exta(G,T) = 0 is considered. U is said to be λ-universal for T if, whenever a torsion-free abelian group G of cardinality at most λ satisfies Ext(G,T)=0, there is an embedding of G into U. For large classes of abelian groups T and cardinals λ, it is shown that the answer is consistently no, that is to say, there is a model of ZFC in which, for pairs T and λ, there is no universal group. In particular, for T torsion, this solves a problem by Kulikov.

Given an N 1 -free abelian group G we characterize the class? G of all torsion abelian groups T satisfying Ext(G,T) = 0 assuming the special continuum hypothesis CH. Moreover, in Godel's constructible universe we prove that this characterizes? G for arbitrary torsion-free abelian G. It follows that there exists some ugly N 1 -free abelian groups.

We survey embeddability results related to RAAGs (right-angled Artin groups) and various automorphism groups of manifolds. We give two different methods of embedding a RAAG to into another, and deduce that every RAAG embeds into some braid groups. This gives the unsolvability of the isomorphism problem for finitely presented subgroups of braid groups. Also, we prove that every RAAG is a quasi-isometrically embedded subgroup of the symplectomorphism groups of the disk and the sphere, given with suitable $L^p$ metrics. Finally, we embed RAAGs in the smooth diffeomorphism group of the real line. These results reveal many closed hyperbolic manifold subgroups of diffeomorphism groups of manifolds.

We define an operation on finite graphs, called co-contraction. By showing that co-contraction of a graph induces an injective map between right-angled Artin groups, we exhibit a family of graphs, without any induced cycle of length at least 5, such that the right-angled Artin groups on those graphs contain hyperbolic surface groups. This gives the negative answer to a question raised by Gordon, Long and Reid.