Given an affine Coxeter group W, the corresponding Shi arrangement is a refinement of the corresponding Coxeter hyperplane arrangements that was introduced by Shi to study Kazhdan–Lusztig cells for W. Shi showed that each region of the Shi arrangement contains exactly one element of minimal length in W. Low elements in W were introduced to study the word problem of the corresponding Artin–Tits (braid) group and turns out to produce automata to study the combinatorics of reduced words in W. In this article, we show, in the case of an affine Coxeter group, that the set of minimal length elements of the regions in the Shi arrangement is precisely the set of low elements, settling a conjecture of Dyer and the second author in this case. As a by-product of our proof, we show that the descent walls – the walls that separate a region from the fundamental alcove – of any region in the Shi arrangement are precisely the descent walls of the alcove of its corresponding low element.

The meridional rank conjecture asks whether the bridge number of a knot in $S^3$ is equal to the minimal number of meridians needed to generate the fundamental group of its complement. In this paper, we investigate the analogous conjecture for knotted spheres in $S^4$. Towards this end, we give a construction to produce classical knots with quotients sending meridians to elements of any finite order in Coxeter groups and alternating groups, which detect their meridional ranks. We establish the equality of bridge number and meridional rank for these knots and knotted spheres obtained from them by twist-spinning. On the other hand, we show that the meridional rank of knotted spheres is not additive under connected sum, so that either bridge number also collapses, or meridional rank is not equal to bridge number for knotted spheres.

Graph products of cyclic groups and Coxeter groups are two families of groups that are defined by labelled graphs. The family of Dyer groups contains these both families and gives us a framework to study these groups in a unified way. This paper focuses on the spherical growth series of a Dyer group D with respect to the standard generating set. We give a recursive formula for the spherical growth series of D in terms of the spherical growth series of standard parabolic subgroups. As an application we obtain the rationality of the spherical growth series of a Dyer group. Furthermore, we show that the spherical growth series of D is closely related to the Euler characteristic of D.

Several finite complex reflection groups have a braid group that is isomorphic to a torus knot group. The reflection group is obtained from the torus knot group by declaring meridians to have order k for some $k\geq 2$, and meridians are mapped to reflections. We study all possible quotients of torus knot groups obtained by requiring meridians to have finite order. Using the theory of J-groups of Achar and Aubert [‘On rank 2 complex reflection groups’, Comm. Algebra 36(6) (2008), 2092–2132], we show that these groups behave like (in general, infinite) complex reflection groups of rank two. The large family of ‘toric reflection groups’ that we obtain includes, among others, all finite complex reflection groups of rank two with a single conjugacy class of reflecting hyperplanes, as well as Coxeter’s truncations of the $3$-strand braid group. We classify these toric reflection groups and explain why the corresponding torus knot group can be naturally considered as its braid group. In particular, this yields a new infinite family of reflection-like groups admitting braid groups that are Garside groups. Moreover, we show that a toric reflection group has cyclic center by showing that the quotient by the center is isomorphic to the alternating subgroup of a Coxeter group of rank three. To this end we use the fact that the center of the alternating subgroup of an irreducible, infinite Coxeter group of rank at least three is trivial. Several ingredients of the proofs are purely Coxeter-theoretic, and might be of independent interest.

In this note, we give a classification of the maximal order Abelian subgroups of finite irreducible Coxeter groups. We also prove a Weyl group analog of Cartan’s theorem that all maximal tori in a connected compact Lie group are conjugate.

We show that certain right-angled Coxeter groups have finite index subgroups that quotient to $\mathbb{Z}$ with finitely generated kernels. The proof uses Bestvina–Brady Morse theory facilitated by combinatorial arguments. We describe a variety of examples where the plan succeeds or fails. Among the successful examples are the right-angled reflection groups in $\mathbb{H}^{4}$ with fundamental domain the 120-cell or the 24-cell.

This paper examines a systematic method of constructing a pair of (inter-related) root systems for arbitrary Coxeter groups from a class of nonstandard geometric representations. This method can be employed to construct generalizations of root systems for a large family of linear groups generated by involutions. We then give a characterization of Coxeter groups, among these groups, in terms of such paired root systems. Furthermore, we use this method to construct and study the paired root systems for reflection subgroups of Coxeter groups.

We define in an axiomatic fashion a Coxeter datum for an arbitrary Coxeter group $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}W$. This Coxeter datum will specify a pair of reflection representations of $W$ in two vector spaces linked only by a bilinear pairing without any integrality or nondegeneracy requirements. These representations are not required to be embeddings of $W$ in the orthogonal group of any vector space, and they give rise to a pair of inter-related root systems generalizing the classical root systems of Coxeter groups. We obtain comparison results between these nonorthogonal root systems and the classical root systems. Further, we study the equivalent of the Tits cone in these nonorthogonal representations.

We construct a two-parameter family of actions ωk,a of the Lie algebra 𝔰𝔩(2,ℝ) by differential–difference operators on ℝN∖{0}. Here k is a multiplicity function for the Dunkl operators, and a>0 arises from the interpolation of the two 𝔰𝔩(2,ℝ) actions on the Weil representation of Mp(N,ℝ) and the minimal unitary representation of O(N+1,2). We prove that this action ωk,a lifts to a unitary representation of the universal covering of SL (2,ℝ) , and can even be extended to a holomorphic semigroup Ωk,a. In the k≡0 case, our semigroup generalizes the Hermite semigroup studied by R. Howe (a=2) and the Laguerre semigroup studied by the second author with G. Mano (a=1) . One boundary value of our semigroup Ωk,a provides us with (k,a) -generalized Fourier transforms ℱk,a, which include the Dunkl transform 𝒟k (a=2) and a new unitary operator ℋk  (a=1) , namely a Dunkl–Hankel transform. We establish the inversion formula, a generalization of the Plancherel theorem, the Hecke identity, the Bochner identity, and a Heisenberg uncertainty relation for ℱk,a. We also find kernel functions for Ωk,a and ℱk,a for a=1,2 in terms of Bessel functions and the Dunkl intertwining operator.

Suppose that W is a finite, unitary, reflection group acting on the complex vector space V and X is a subspace of V. Define N to be the setwise stabilizer of X in W, Z to be the pointwise stabilizer, and C=N/Z. Then restriction defines a homomorphism from the algebra of W-invariant polynomial functions on V to the algebra of C-invariant functions on X. In this note we consider the special case when W is a Coxeter group, V is the complexified reflection representation of W, and X is in the lattice of the arrangement of W, and give a simple, combinatorial characterization of when the restriction mapping is surjective in terms of the exponents of W and C. As an application of our result, in the case when W is the Weyl group of a semisimple, complex Lie algebra, we complete a calculation begun by Richardson in 1987 and obtain a simple combinatorial characterization of regular decomposition classes whose closure is a normal variety.

The paper studies modular reduction techniques for abstract regular and chiral polytopes, with two purposes in mind: first, to survey the literature about modular reduction in polytopes; and second, to apply modular reduction, with moduli given by primes in $\mathbb{Z}\left[ \tau \right]$ (with $\tau$ the golden ratio), to construct new regular 4-polytopes of hyperbolic types $\{3,\,5,\,3\}$ and $\{5,\,3,\,5\}$ with automorphism groups given by finite orthogonal groups.

We describe the Zariski closure of the geometric realization of Coxeter groups. When the Coxeter system is irreducible and the Tits form B non-positive and non-degenerate, this Zariski closure is equal to the orthogonal group of B.

We obtain a number of results regarding the freeness of subgroups of Coxeter groups, Artin groups and one-relator groups with torsion. In the case of Coxeter groups, we also obtain results on quasiconvexity and subgroup separability.

In this paper we find a formula for the Alexander polynomial ${{\Delta }_{p1,...,{{p}_{k}}\left( x \right)}}$ of pretzel knots and links with $\left( {{p}_{1}},...,{{p}_{k}},-1 \right)$ twists, where $k$ is odd and ${{p}_{1}},...,{{p}_{k}}$ are positive integers. The polynomial ${{\Delta }_{2,3,7}}\left( x \right)$ is the well-known Lehmer polynomial, which is conjectured to have the smallest Mahler measure among all monic integer polynomials. We confirm that ${{\Delta }_{2,3,7}}\left( x \right)$ has the smallest Mahler measure among the polynomials arising as ${{\Delta }_{p1,...,{{p}_{k}}\left( x \right)}}$.

In this paper we use the Hecke algebra of type $\bf B$ to define a new algebra $\mathcal S$ which is an analogue of the $q$-Schur algebra. We show that $\mathcal S$ has ‘generic’ basis which is independent of the choice of ring and the parameters $q$ and $Q$. We then construct Weyl modules for $\mathcal S$ and obtain, as factor modules, a family of irreducible $\mathcal S$-modules defined over any field.

1991 Mathematics Subject Classification: 16G99, 20C20, 20G05.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a general procedure for computing analogues of Young's seminormal representations of the symmetric groups. The method is to generalize the Jucys-Murphy elements in the group algebras of the symmetric groups to arbitrary Weyl groups and Iwahori-Hecke algebras. The combinatorics of these elements allows one to compute irreducible representations explicitly and often very easily. In this paper we do these computations for Weyl groups and Iwahori-Hecke algebras of types $A_n$, $B_n$, $D_n$, $G_2$. Although these computations are in reach for types $F_4$, $E_6$ and $E_7$, we shall postpone this to another work.

1991 Mathematics Subject Classification: primary 20F55, 20C15; secondary 20C30, 20G05.