On the commutator subgroup of a right-angled Artin group (Q1755564)

The easiest way to specify the presentation for a right-angled Artin group is by means of the defining graph \(\Gamma \) . This is the graph whose vertices are labeled by the generators \(S=\{s_{1},\dots ,s_{n}\}\) and whose edges connect a pair of vertices \(s_{i}\), \(s_{j}\) if and only if \(s_{i}s_{j}=s_{j}s_{i}\). Note that any finite, simplicial graph \(\Gamma \) is the defining graph for a right-angled Artin group \(A_{\Gamma }\). Right-angled Artin groups are particular cases of graph product groups, corresponding to a sequence of \(m\) groups \(G_{1},\dots ,G_{m}\) and a graph \(\Gamma \) on \(m\) vertices. The graph product group \(G^{\Gamma }\) consists of words with letters from \(G_{1},\dots ,G_{m}\) in which the elements of \(G_{i}\) and \(G_{j}\) with \(i\neq j\) commute whenever \(\{i, j\}\) is an edge of \(\Gamma \). To each simplicial graph its clique complex \(\mathcal{K}\) is assigned. Although the graph \(\Gamma \) is enough to describe graph products groups, many of their properties are formulated more explicitly in terms of the simplicial complex \(\mathcal{K}\). So, the right-angled Artin group corresponding to \(\mathcal{K}\) is defined by generators and relations as follows: \[ RA_{\mathcal{K}}=\langle g_{1}, g_{2}, \dots , g_{m}\mid g_{i}g_{j}=g{j}g{i}, \{i,j\}\in \mathcal{K} \rangle. \] In the present paper, the authors, using the construction of polyhedral products and other techniques of toric topology, study the commutator subgroups of right-angled Artin groups and more general graph products. Quoting some information about right-angled Artin groups and polyhedral products, at the beginning, the authors first prove Theorem 3.1 , where a special basis for the commutator subgroup of a free group is constructed, which is also a right-angled Artin group corresponding to \(m\) disjoint vertices. Several other constructions of bases in the commutator subgroup of a free group are known [\textit{L. A. Bokut'} and \textit{G. P. Kukin}, Algorithmic and combinatorial algebra. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers (1994; Zbl 0826.17002); \textit{T. C. Hurley} and \textit{M. A. Ward}, Proc. R. Ir. Acad., Sect. A 96, No. 1, 43--65 (1996; Zbl 0914.20023)]. In Theorem 4.1, an explicit minimal set of generators for the commutator subgroup of an arbitrary right-angled Artin group \(RA_{\mathcal{K}}\) is given. The generators are nested iterated commutators of powers of the canonical generators of \(RA_{\mathcal{K}}\) appearing in a special order prescribed by the combinatorics of \(\mathcal{K}\). Finally, this result is generalised to arbitrary graph products (Theorem 5.2). As it is noticed, the first part of the theorem is already proved in [\textit{T. E. Panov} and \textit{Y. A. Veryovkin}, Sb. Math. 207, No. 11, 1582--1600 (2016; Zbl 1397.20040); translation from Mat. Sb. 207, No. 11, 105--126 (2016)].