The cohomology of Bestvina-Brady groups. (Q646379)

Let \(L\) be a non-empty simplicial complex. \textit{M. Bestvina} and \textit{N. Brady} construct a group \(H_L\) naturally associated to \(L\) in such a way that the finiteness properties of \(H_L\) are determined by the complex \(L\) [Invent. Math. 129, No. 3, 445-470 (1997; Zbl 0888.20021)]. The authors study in this paper the homological properties of the groups \(H_L\) without the geometric input from Bestvina and Brady. The authors construct a space \(T_L\) associated to a simplicial complex \(L\) and a map \(\mu_L\colon T_L\to\mathbb T\), where \(\mathbb T\) denotes the circle. Let \(\widetilde T_L\) be the infinite cyclic cover of \(T_L\) determined by \(\mu_L\). It follows that \(H_L\) is the kernel of the map induced on fundamental groups \(\mu_*\colon G_L\to\mathbb Z\), where \(G_L\) is the fundamental group of \(T_L\). The authors study the homology and cohomology of \(H_L\) via these spaces. For example, they prove the following Proposition. Let \(C^*(\widetilde T_L;A)\) denote the cellular cochain complex for \(\widetilde T_L\) with coefficients in the Abelian group \(A\). Then \[ C^n(\widetilde T_L;A)\cong\prod_{i\in\mathbb Z}C^{n-1}_+(L;A), \] where \(C^{n-1}_+(L;A)\) denotes the reduced cochain complex of \(L\) with coefficients in \(A\). As a corrollary the authors also prove Theorem 13. Let \(R\) be a ring. Then, the image of the map \(H^*(T_L;R)\to H^*(\widetilde T_L;R)\) is the \(\mathbb Z\)-fixed point subring of \(H^*(\widetilde T_L;R)\) and is isomorphic to the quotient \(H^*(T_L;R)/(\beta_L)\), where \(\beta_L\) is an element determined by \(L\). In degree \(n\), the cokernel of this map is isomorphic to an infinite product of copies \(\overline H^{n-1}(L;R)\). The authors determine the cohomological dimension and what they call `trivial cohomological dimension' of these groups.