Triangles, squares and geodesics.

DOI10.1142/S0218196712500415MaRDI QIDQ2909487zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Jon McCammond, Rena Levitt

Publication date 30 August 2012

Published in International Journal of Algebra and Computation (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5688

zbMATH Keywords

biautomatic groupsCAT(0) groupsdecidabilitynonpositive curvature

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Geometric group theory (20F65) Hyperbolic groups and nonpositively curved groups (20F67)

Abstract: In the early 1990s Steve Gersten and Hamish Short proved that compact nonpositively curved triangle complexes have biautomatic fundamental groups and that compact nonpositively curved square complexes have biautomatic fundamental groups. In this article we report on the extent to which results such as these extend to nonpositively curved complexes built out a mixture of triangles and squares. Since both results by Gersten and Short have been generalized to higher dimensions, this can be viewed as a first step towards unifying Januszkiewicz and {'S}wi{.a}tkowski's theory of simplicial nonpositive curvature with the theory of nonpositively curved cube complexes.

Review text

Several classes of CAT(0) groups are known to be biautomatic, and the first result in this direction is probably the one of \textit{S. M. Gersten} and \textit{H. B. Short} [Invent. Math. 102, No. 2, 305-334 (1990; Zbl 0714.20016)] stating that the fundamental group of any compact nonpositively curved triangle (respectively square) complex is biautomatic.NEWLINENEWLINE The authors in the paper under review conjecture that the result extends to nonpositively curved complexes made out of a mixture of triangles and squares. They establish a partial result in this direction, namely, that for every compact nonpositively curved triangle-square complex \(K\) there exists a canonically defined language of geodesics that reduces to the regular languages used by Short and Gersten in the case where \(K\) is a triangle or a square complex.

Recommendations

• Small cancellation theory and automatic groups. II
• Groups acting on CAT(0) square complexes
• Square complexes and simplicial nonpositive curvature.
• The growth of nonpositively curved triangles of groups
• Geodesic edge paths in nonpositively curved complexes

Cites work

• Automatic structures, rational growth, and geometrically finite hyperbolic groups
• Braids, posets and orthoschemes
• FANS AND LADDERS IN SMALL CANCELLATION THEORY
• Geometric invariants of spaces with isolated flats.
• Regular path systems and (bi)automatic groups.
• Small cancellation theory and automatic groups

Cited in

(3)

• Non-hyperbolic automatic groups and groups acting on CAT(0) cube complexes.
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2098649 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 849263 (Why is no real title available?)

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