Signed dual graphs and face spectral gaps of Cayley 2-complexes

Abstract

We construct a weighted signed dual multigraph for the Cayley $2$-complex of a finite presentation and represent its ${\ell }^2$ face Laplacian as a signed graph Laplacian with a diagonal potential. We prove that the face spectral gap above the kernel vanishes for the Baumslag--Solitar groups $\mathrm{BS}(1,m)$, $m\ge 2$, using explicit finitely supported face chains. Our main vanishing theorem gives the same conclusion for every finitely presented amenable group with ordinary first Betti number at least two.