A Cubical Flat Torus Theorem and the Bounded Packing Property

Abstract

We prove the bounded packing property for any abelian subgroup of a group acting properly and cocompactly on a CAT(0) cube complex. A main ingredient of the proof is a cubical flat torus theorem. This ingredient is also used to show that central HNN extensions of maximal free-abelian subgroups of compact special groups are virtually special, and to produce various examples of groups that are not cocompactly cubulated.

arXiv comment14 pages, 2 figures, submitted May 2015 Minor corrections and swapped sections 2 and 3 Corrected an unfortunate typo in Theorem 2.1 - the hypothesis that the cube complex be finite dimensional has now been added