Geometric generators for braid-like groups (Q280910)

The authors extend a well-known construction of geometric generators for finite-type Artin groups to a much more general setting, and apply it to an interesting example conjectured to be related to the monster simple group. They consider a locally finite arrangement of hyperplanes \(\mathcal M\) in an ambient space \(X\) equal to \({\mathbb C}^n\), complex hyperbolic space \({\mathbb{CH}}^n\), or the hermitian symmetric space for the orthogonal group \(O(n,2)\), and study the complement \(X - \bigcup {\mathcal M}\) and its quotient by a discrete group \(P\Gamma\) acting by isometries on \(X\) preserving \(\mathcal M\), and generated by reflections in the hyperplanes of \(\mathcal M\). The action of \(P\Gamma\) need not be free and the base point \(a\) is allowed to be a torsion point, and can be replaced by certain convex, not necessarily compact sets \(A\), as is necessary for the intended application. For each hyperplane \(H \in {\mathcal M}\), a loop in \(X - \bigcup {\mathcal M}\) is constructed, and these loops are shown to generate the fundamental group of \(X - \bigcup {\mathcal M}\). Reflections in \(P\Gamma\) are used to construct loops in \(X - \bigcup {\mathcal M}/P\Gamma\), in complete analogy with the standard construction of geometric generators for a finite-type Artin group from the corresponding reflection arrangement. The main result of the paper is that the loops in \(X - \bigcup {\mathcal M}/P\Gamma\) corresponding to the hyperplanes of \(\mathcal M\) closest to \(a\) form a generating set for the orbifold fundamental group \(\pi_1^{\mathrm{orb}}(X - {\mathcal M}/P\Gamma, a)\), provided that the reflections in those hyperplanes generate \(P\Gamma\) and that a second more technical geometric condition is satisfied. This result is applied to a ``monstrous'' example in \({\mathbb{CH}}^{13}\). The arrangement \(\mathcal M\) is defined by certain vectors in a lattice \(L \subseteq {\mathbb C}^{14}\) over the ring of Eisenstein integers, an extension of the Leech lattice. This lattice is generated by 26 vectors that are described using point-line incidences in the finite projective plane \({\mathbb P}^2({\mathbb F_3})\). The second author had shown that the reflections in the corresponding 26 hyperplanes generate \(P\Gamma\) -- in fact \(P\Gamma\) is a quotient of the Artin group defined by the point-line incidence graph of \({\mathbb P}^2({\mathbb F_3})\) -- and that these are the hyperplanes of \(\mathcal M\) closest to a particular ideal point \(\tau\) fixed by \(P\Gamma\). The first author had conjectured that the bimonster \((M \times M) \rtimes {\mathbb Z}_2\), where \(M\) is the monster simple group, can be obtained from the orbifold fundamental group \(\pi_1^{\mathrm{orb}}(X - {\mathcal M}/P\Gamma, A)\) by killing the squares of meridians. Here \(A\) is a horoball centered at \(\tau\). After considerable effort, some of which is carried out in a separate paper, the authors show that the geometric condition in their main result is satisfied in this example, and conclude that the 26 corresponding loops generate \(\pi_1^{\mathrm{orb}}(X - {\mathcal M}/P\Gamma, A)\), representing some progress toward a proof of the conjecture. They suggest that their main result may also be applied, with \(X\) equal to the hermitian symmetric space for \(O(n,2)\), to understand the orbifold fundamental groups of other discriminant complements and moduli spaces arising in algebraic geometry.