English

Relative automorphism groups of right-angled Artin groups

Group Theory 2019-04-24 v3 Geometric Topology

Abstract

We study the outer automorphism group of a right-angled Artin group AΓA_\Gamma with finite defining graph Γ\Gamma. We construct a subnormal series for Out(AΓ)Out(A_\Gamma) such that each consecutive quotient is either finite, free-abelian, GL(n,Z)GL(n,\mathbb{Z}), or a Fouxe-Rabinovitch group. The last two types act respectively on a symmetric space or a deformation space of trees, so that there is a geometric way of studying each piece. As a consequence we prove that the group Out(AΓ)Out(A_\Gamma) is type VF (it has a finite index subgroup with a finite classifying space). The main technical work is a study of relative outer automorphism groups of RAAGs and their restriction homomorphisms, refining work of Charney, Crisp, and Vogtmann. We show that the images and kernels of restriction homomorphisms are always simpler examples of relative outer automorphism groups of RAAGs. We also give generators for relative automorphism groups of RAAGs, in the style of Laurence's theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1712.01583,
  title  = {Relative automorphism groups of right-angled Artin groups},
  author = {Matthew B. Day and Richard D. Wade},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.01583},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

42 pages, 6 figures. Final arXiv version. Accepted for publication by the Journal of Topology