\(\mathrm{CAT}(0)\) and cubulated Shephard groups (Q7035152)

A Shephard group [\textit{G. C. Shephard}, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 2, 82--97 (1952; Zbl 0047.14106)] is the symmetry group of a regular complex polytope. These symmetry groups are complex reflection groups, that is finite subgroups of \(\mathrm{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{C})\) generated by complex linear reflections, and have a `Coxeter-like' presentation. Shephard groups are generalizations of Coxeter groups, Artin groups, and graph products of cyclic groups.\N\NThe author extends the well-known result that Coxeter groups are CAT(0) to a class of Shephard groups that have `enough' finite parabolic subgroups. She also proves that in this setting, if the associated Coxeter group is type (FC), then the Shephard group acts properly and cocompactly on a CAT(0) cube complex. An important tool in the demonstration of this paper's results is of indepentent interest. In fact, the author introduces a new criterion for a complex made of \(\mathsf{A}_{3}\) simplices to be CAT(1), see Appendix A.\N\NThe reviewer quotes in full a remark by the author placed at the end of the introduction: ``We would like to briefly note that there is some similarity between the construction and results presented here with a recent paper of \textit{M. Soergel} [J. Comb. Algebra 8, No. 1--2, 209--249 (2024; Zbl 1540.20084)] which studies a subclass of Shephard groups called Dyer groups. These ideas were developed independently, and there are many interesting Shephard groups covered by one result but not the other (although there is some overlap). For example, in [Soergel, loc. cit.], some Shephard groups with vertex labels \(\infty\) are shown to be CAT(0), whereas in this paper it is required that all vertices have finite labels. But in contrast, we can treat many Shephard groups which have finite-label edges between vertices whose labels are not \(2\), which is not covered by the results of [Soergel, loc. cit.]. Moreover, the proof techniques remain largely independent.''