Quasi-isometric classification of some high dimensional right-angled Artin groups. (Q531904)

Given a class of groups, one of the fundamental questions due to Gromov asks which of them are quasi-isometric to each other. In the present article the authors study this question for a class of right-angled Artin groups. Recall that a `right-angled Artin group' is a finitely presented group \(G\) which can be described by a finite graph \(\Gamma\), the presentation graph, in the following way: the vertices of \(\Gamma\) correspond to the generators of \(G\) and the defining relations in \(G\) consist of commuting relation between each pair of generators connected by an edge in \(\Gamma\). In order to state the main result of the paper we need some notations. Let \(T_n\) be the smallest class of \(n\)-dimensional simplicial complexes satisfying: (a) the \(n\) simplex is in \(T_n\); and (b) if \(K_1\) and \(K_2\) are complexes in \(T_n\) then the union of \(K_1\) and \(K_2\) along any \((n-1)\)-simplex is also in \(T_n\). For \(n=1\) this is the class of finite trees. For \(K\in T_n\) the authors define \(A_K\) to be the right-angled Artin group whose presentation graph is the \(1\)-skeleton of \(K\). To each \(K\in T_n\) they also assign a tree \(\Gamma(K)\) whose vertices are colored in \(n+1\) \(\mathbf p\)-colors and one \(\mathbf f\)-color. (The precise vertex-coloring procedure and a notion of bisimilarity for such trees are described in Section~2 of the paper.) Theorem. Given \(K,K'\in T_n\), the groups \(A_K\) and \(A_{K'}\) are quasi-isometric if and only if \(\Gamma(K)\) and \(\Gamma(K')\) are bisimilar after possibly reordering the \(\mathbf p\)-colors by an element of the symmetric group on \(n+1\) elements. This theorem generalizes some results of \textit{J. A. Behrstock} and \textit{W. D. Neumann} [from Duke Math. J. 141, No. 2, 217-240 (2008; Zbl 1194.20045)] and gives the first quasi-isometric classification for a class of Artin groups with dimension larger than \(2\).