On the fundamental group of certain polyhedral products

Abstract

Let $K$ be a finite simplicial complex, and $(X,A)$ be a pair of spaces. The purpose of this article is to study the fundamental group of the polyhedral product denoted $Z_K(X,A)$, which denotes the moment-angle complex of Buchstaber-Panov in the case $(X,A) = (D^2, S^1)$, with extension to arbitrary pairs in [2] as given in Definition 2.2 here. For the case of a discrete group $G$, we give necessary and sufficient conditions on the abstract simplicial complex $K$ such that the polyhedral product denoted by $Z_K(\underline{BG})$ is an Eilenberg-Mac Lane space. The fundamental group of $Z_K(\underline{BG})$ is shown to depend only on the 1-skeleton of $K$. Further special examples of polyhedral products are also investigated. Finally, we use polyhedral products to study an extension problem related to transitively commutative groups, which are given in Definition 5.2.