Relative Garside elements of Artin monoids

Abstract

We introduce a relative Garside element, the quotient of the corresponding Garside elements G1 and G2, for a pair of Artin monoids associated to Coxeter graphs Gamma1 and Gamma2, the second graph containing a new vertex. These relative elements give a recurrence relation between Garside elements. As an application, we compute explicitly the Garside elements of Artin monoids corresponding to spherical Coxeter graphs or the longest elements of the associated finite Coxeter groups.