Some virtually special hyperbolic 3-manifold groups (Q439898)

In the paper under review the authors consider a complete hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold \(M\) with finite volume that admits a decomposition into right-angled ideal polyhedra. The main result is that the fundamental group of \(M\) is virtually special (in the sense of \textit{F. Haglund} and \textit{D.T. Wise} [Geom. Funct. Anal. 17 (2007), No. 5, 1551-1620 (2008; Zbl 1155.53025)]) and LERF, i.e. every finitely generated subgroup is separable. In the first part, the authors show that such a manifold has a deformation retraction that is a virtually special compact square complex. Indeed they associate a standard square complex to the decomposition. The non-positive curvature of the complex is due to the right-angled property of the polyhedra. Moreover, each hyperplane in the standard square complex has separable fundamental group in the fundamental group of the manifold. The property of separability allows the authors to remove, up to passing to a finite covering, all the pathologies of hyperplanes forbidden in a special cube complex, using a Theorem from [loc. cit.]. Moreover, \(M\) is virtually fibered by \textit{I. Agol}'s result [J. Topol. 1, No. 2, 269--284 (2008; Zbl 1148.57023)]. In the second part, the authors generalize a result of Haglund and Wise [loc. cit.] about hyperbolic groups to the relatively hyperbolic setting and they deduce that the fundamental group of \(M\) is LERF. The proof relies on the fact that if a cusped finite volume hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold has a deformation retraction which is a virtually special compact square complex then every relatively quasiconvex subgroup in the fundamental group is a virtual retract. Their results provide new examples of a family of manifolds with LERF fundamental group. These are infinite families of hyperbolic \(3\)-manifolds that decompose into right-angled polyhedra and they are not commensurable to any \(3\)-dimensional reflection orbifold (so they are not included in the work of \textit{I. Agol} et al. [Ann. Math. (2) 153, No. 3, 599--621 (2001; Zbl 1067.20067)]). For instance, a family of pairwise incommensurable, complete, one-cusped, hyperbolic \(3\)-manifolds with an ideal right-angled polyhedral decomposition containing both octahedra and cuboctahedra is explicitly constructed. Another example is given by an infinite family of augmented link complements. It is worth noting that the virtually special property of the fundamental group of \(M\) is included in a statement by \textit{D. Wise} [''The structure of groups with a quasiconvex hierarchy'', (2012; http://www.math.mcgill.ca/ wise/papers.html), Theorem 14.29]. Indeed Wise shows that the fundamental group of finite volume cusped hyperbolic \(3\)-manifolds is virtually the fundamental group of a compact special cube complex. However, the paper under review appeared as a preprint in 2009, before Wise's result. For a complete overview of recent results on \(3\)-manifold groups see the paper by \textit{M. Aschenbrenner}, \textit{S. Friedl} and \textit{H. Wilton} [``\(3\)-manifold groups'', (2012), \url{arXiv:1205.0202}].