Abstract commensurators of right-angled Artin groups and mapping class groups. (Q477935)

The authors show that in all but finitely many exceptions, the mapping class group of a surface is not abstractly commensurable with a right-angled Artin group. The proof shows that abstract commensurators of nonabelian right-angled Artin groups contain arbitrarily large finite subgroups, whereas the abstract commensurator of a mapping class group is commensurable with the mapping class group itself. Mapping class groups are well known to have bounded size finite subgroups, which establishes the result. For the case of mapping class groups, the main result of the article follows from quasi-isometric rigidity of mapping class groups, though the argument given by the authors also applies to the Torelli group and terms in the Johnson filtration.