Cones and ping-pong in three dimensions (Q6197628)

An hypergeometric group is a subgroup of \(\mathrm{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{C})\) generated by three matrices \(R, T, U\) such that \(U^{-1}T R = I\), \(U\) and \(R\) have no shared eigenvalues, and \(T-I\) has rank-1. In the paper under review, the authors study the hypergeometric group in \(\mathrm{GL}_{3}(\mathbb{C})\) with parameters \(\alpha= \big (\frac{1}{4},\frac{1}{2},\frac{3}{4} \big)\) and \(\beta=\big ( 0,0,0 \big )\). They give a new proof that this group is isomorphic to the free product \(\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}\ast \mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\) by exhibiting a ping-pong table.