Combinatorial descriptions of multi-vertex $2$-complexes

Jon McCammond
2010 Illinois Journal of Mathematics  
Group presentations are implicit descriptions of 2dimensional cell complexes with only one vertex. While such complexes are usually sufficient for topological investigations of groups, multi-vertex complexes are often preferable when the focus shifts to geometric considerations. In this article, I show how to quickly describe the most important multi-vertex 2-complexes using a slight variation of the traditional group presentation. As an illustration, I describe multi-vertex 2-complexes for
more » ... s knot groups and one-relator Artin groups from which their elementary properties are easily derived. The latter are used to give an easy geometric proof of a classic result of Appel and Schupp.
doi:10.1215/ijm/1299679742 fatcat:4jnag5rotfc3tiwahekmezjblm