A condition that prevents groups from acting fixed point free on cube complexes

Abstract

We describe a group theoretic condition which ensures that any cellular action of a group satisfying this condition on a CAT(0) cube complex has a global fixed point. In particular, we show that this fixed point criterion is satisfied by the automorphism group of a free group of rank n. For the unique subgroup of index two in the automorphism group of a free group, we obtain a similar result.