Parabolic Normalizers in Finite Coxeter Groups as Subdirect Products
Abstract
We revisit the structure of the normalizer of a parabolic subgroup in a finite Coxeter group , originally described by Howlett. Building on Howlett's Lemma, which provides canonical complements for reflection subgroups, and inspired by a recent construction of Serre for involution centralizers, we refine this understanding by interpreting as a subdirect product via Goursat's Lemma. Central to our approach is a Galois connection on the lattice of parabolic subgroups, which leads to a new decomposition \begin{align*} N_W(P) \cong (P \times Q) \rtimes ((A \times B) \rtimes C)\text, \end{align*} where each subgroup reflects a structural feature of the ambient Coxeter system. This perspective yields a more symmetric description of , organized around naturally associated reflection subgroups on mutually orthogonal subspaces of the reflection representation of . Our analysis provides new conceptual clarity and includes a case-by-case classification for all irreducible finite Coxeter groups.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.15850,
title = {Parabolic Normalizers in Finite Coxeter Groups as Subdirect Products},
author = {J. Matthew Douglass and Götz Pfeiffer and Gerhard Roehrle},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.15850},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
25 pages, v2 minor changes, v3 final version, small changes; to appear in the Journal of Group Theory