English

A complex euclidean reflection group with an elegant complement complex

Group Theory 2017-07-21 v1

Abstract

The complement of a hyperplane arrangement in Cn\mathbb{C}^n deformation retracts onto an nn-dimensional cell complex, but the known procedures only apply to complexifications of real arrangements (Salvetti) or the cell complex produced depends on an initial choice of coordinates (Bj\"orner-Ziegler). In this article we consider the unique complex euclidean reflection group acting cocompactly by isometries on C2\mathbb{C}^2 whose linear part is the finite complex reflection group known as G4G_4 in the Shephard-Todd classification and we construct a choice-free deformation retraction from its hyperplane complement onto an elegant 22-dimensional complex KK where every 22-cell is a euclidean equilateral triangle and every vertex link is a M\"obius-Kantor graph. Since KK is non-positively curved, the corresponding braid group is a CAT(0) group, despite the fact that there are non-regular points in the hyperplane complement, the action of the reflection group on KK is not free, and the braid group is not torsion-free.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.06624,
  title  = {A complex euclidean reflection group with an elegant complement complex},
  author = {Ben Coté and Jon McCammond},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.06624},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

30 pages, 4 figures