A graphical description of the BNS-invariants of Bestvina-Brady groups and the RAAG recognition problem (Q6837628)

The paper studies the RAAG recognition problem for finitely presented Bestvina-Brady groups defined by finite graphs. One of the main results shows that if the defining graph admits a tree 2-spanner, then the associated Bestvina-Brady group is a right-angled Artin group; more precisely, the presentation of \textit{W. Dicks} and \textit{I. J. Leary} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 127, No. 2, 343--348 (1999; Zbl 0923.20032)] can be simplified to a standard RAAG presentation and the defining graph of this RAAG is described in terms of the dual graph of the chosen tree 2-spanner. As an application, the authors obtain that every right-angled Artin group arises as a Bestvina-Brady group.\N\NA second main part of the paper gives a graphical description of the Bieri-Neumann-Strebel invariant of a finitely presented Bestvina-Brady group. Characters are encoded by edge-labelings and the authors show that a non-zero character belongs to the BNS-invariant if and only if its dead edge subgraph does not contain a full separating subgraph. From this, the complement of the BNS-invariant is described as a union of missing subspheres corresponding to minimal full separating subgraphs. The paper also derives a criterion ensuring that a Bestvina-Brady group is not a right-angled Artin group, based on the presence of redundant triangles.\N\NIn the 2-dimensional simply connected case, these two directions are combined to obtain a complete graphical characterization: for a biconnected graph, the associated Bestvina-Brady group is RAAG if and only if the flag complex contains no crowned triangles and this is also equivalent to the group being an Artin group. The paper thus provides an explicit solution to the RAAG recognition problem for this class of Bestvina-Brady groups.