Automorphisms of Bestvina-Brady Groups: IA Rigidity, Arithmetic Commensurability, and Finiteness
Abstract
Let be the Bestvina-Brady group associated to a finite connected graph . For a biconnected defining graph, we prove two structure theorems. First, restriction induces an isomorphism compatible with the Andreadakis-Johnson filtrations. Second, the quadratic and cubic lower-central relation spaces, together with the separator arrangement detected by the Bieri-Neumann-Strebel invariant, determine a rational associative algebra . Every integral rank-one square-zero element of this algebra is realized by an automorphism of , and the subgroup generated by these roots has finite index both in the cohomological image of and in the unit group of an integral order in . For an arbitrary connected graph, the graph-block decomposition gives the Grushko decomposition of . Relative free-product automorphism theory then implies that and are finitely generated and satisfy the Tits alternative relative to virtually polycyclic groups. We prove that is finitely presented if and only if is finitely presented. This equivalence fails for higher finiteness properties without additional hypotheses: for with , is of type , whereas is of type but not . We also construct a type- Bestvina-Brady group whose automorphism and outer automorphism groups are finitely generated but not finitely presented, and show that is not finitely presented for , whereas is virtually infinite cyclic.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.23380,
title = {Automorphisms of Bestvina-Brady Groups: IA Rigidity, Arithmetic Commensurability, and Finiteness},
author = {Jialin Lei},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.23380},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
101 pages, comments are welcome