Lie theory and coverings of finite groups (Q2438934)

A quandle is a set \(\mathcal{C}\) with an operation \(\mathcal{C} \times \mathcal{C} \ni (a,b) \mapsto {}^ab \in \mathcal{C}\) satisfying some axioms, which is a notion capturing the properties of a conjugacy class in a group. In the paper under review, the authors introduce the notion of an `inverse property' (IP) quandle, and show that for any IP-quandle \(\mathcal{C}\) one can construct an associated group \(G_{\mathcal{C}}\). For a class of IP-quandles they call ``locally skew'' and when \(G_{\mathcal{C}}\) is finite, they show that the noncommutative de Rham cohomology \(H^1(G_{\mathcal{C}})\) is one-dimensional. Let \(G\) be a group, and \(\mathcal{C} \subseteq G \setminus\{e\}\) be an ad-stable and inversion-stable subset generating \(G\). They prove that there is a ``covering map'' \(G_{\mathcal{C}} \twoheadrightarrow G\) with central kernel. They also verify that this map is isomorphism if \(G\) is crystallographic reflection group \(W\) and \(\mathcal{C}\) the set of reflections, and that \(\mathcal{C}\) is locally skew precisely when \(W\) is simply-laced. In addition, the map for \(G=\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z})\) and \(\mathcal{C} = \mathbb{Z}P^1 \cup \mathbb{Z}P^1\) is also calculated.