Structure of conjugacy classes in Coxeter groups

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive description of conjugacy classes in Coxeter groups using cyclic shifts, introduces a structural conjugation graph, and proves its connectivity, advancing understanding of conjugacy structures in these groups.

Contribution

It explicitly computes the structural conjugation graph for any Coxeter group conjugacy class and proves its connectivity, also describing centralisers and decompositions of elements.

Findings

Structural conjugation graph is connected for all conjugacy classes.

Explicit computation of the conjugation graph for any Coxeter group.

Description of centralisers and element decompositions in Coxeter groups.

Abstract

This paper gives a definitive solution to the problem of describing conjugacy classes in arbitrary Coxeter groups in terms of cyclic shifts. Let $(W,S)$ be a Coxeter system. A cyclic shift of an element $w\in W$ is a conjugate of $w$ of the form $sws$ for some simple reflection $s\in S$ such that $\ell_S(sws)\leq\ell_S(w)$. The cyclic shift class of $w$ is then the set of elements of $W$ that can be obtained from $w$ by a sequence of cyclic shifts. Given a subset $K\subseteq S$ such that $W_K:=\langle K\rangle\subseteq W$ is finite, we also call two elements $w,w'\in W$ $K$-conjugate if $w,w'$ normalise $W_K$ and $w'=w_0(K)ww_0(K)$, where $w_0(K)$ is the longest element of $W_K$. Let $\mathcal O$ be a conjugacy class in $W$, and let $\mathcal O^{\min}$ be the set of elements of minimal length in $\mathcal O$. Then $\mathcal O^{\min}$ is the disjoint union of finitely many cyclic shift classes $C_1,\dots,C_k$. We define the structural conjugation graph associated to $\mathcal O$ to be the graph with vertices $C_1,\dots,C_k$, and with an edge between distinct vertices $C_i,C_j$ if they contain representatives $u\in C_i$ and $v\in C_j$ such that $u,v$ are $K$-conjugate for some $K\subseteq S$. In this paper, we compute explicitely the structural conjugation graph associated to any (possibly twisted) conjugacy class in $W$, and show in particular that it is connected (that is, any two conjugate elements of $W$ differ only by a sequence of cyclic shifts and $K$-conjugations). Along the way, we obtain several results of independent interest, such as a description of the centraliser of an infinite order element $w\in W$, as well as the existence of natural decompositions of $w$ as a product of a "torsion part" and of a "straight part", with useful properties.