The genus of the configuration spaces for Artin groups of affine type

Abstract

Let $(W,S)$ be a Coxeter system, $S$ finite, and let $G_{W}$ be the associated Artin group. One has configuration spaces $Y,\ Y_{W},$ where $G_{W}=\pi_1(Y_{W}),$ and a natural $W$-covering $f_{W}:\ Y\to Y_{W}.$ The Schwarz genus $g(f_{W})$ is a natural topological invariant to consider. In this paper we generalize this result by computing the Schwarz genus for a class of Artin groups, which includes the affine-type Artin groups. Let $K=K(W,S)$ be the simplicial scheme of all subsets $J\subset S$ such that the parabolic group $ W_J $ is finite. We introduce the class of groups for which $dim(K)$ equals the homological dimension of $K,$ and we show that $g(f_{W})$ is always the maximum possible for such class of groups. For affine Artin groups, such maximum reduces to the rank of the group. In general, it is given by $dim(X_{W})+1,$ where $ X_{ W}\subset Y_{ W}$ is a well-known $CW$-complex which has the same homotopy type as $ Y_{ W}.$