We prove that the automorphism group of the braid group on four strands acts faithfully and geometrically on a CAT(0) 2-complex. This implies that the automorphism group of the free group of rank two acts faithfully and geometrically on a CAT(0) 2-complex, in contrast to the situation for rank three and above.
We study fixed point properties of the automorphism group of the universal Coxeter group Aut$(W_n)$. In particular, we prove that whenever Aut$(W_n)$ acts by isometries on complete $d$-dimensional CAT$(0)$ space with $d<lfloorfrac{n}{2}rfloor$, then
it must fix a point. We also prove that Aut$(W_n)$ does not have Kazhdans property (T). Further, strong restrictions are obtained on homomorphisms of Aut$(W_n)$ to groups that do not contain a copy of Sym(n).
The present paper records more details of the relationship between primitive elements and palindromes in F_2, the free group of rank two. We characterise the conjugacy classes of primitive elements which contain palindromes as those which contain cyc
lically reduced words of odd length. We identify large palindromic subwords of certain primitives in conjugacy classes which contain cyclically reduced words of even length. We show that under obvious conditions on exponent sums, pairs of palindromic primitives form palindromic bases for F_2. Further, we note that each cyclically reduced primitive element is either a palindrome, or the concatenation of two palindromes.
We introduce new techniques for studying boundary dynamics of CAT(0) groups. For a group $G$ acting geometrically on a CAT(0) space $X$ we show there is a flat $Fsubset X$ of maximal dimension whose boundary sphere intersects every minimal $G$-invari
ant subset of $partial_infty X$. As a result we derive a necessary and sufficient dynamical condition for $G$ to be virtually-Abelian, as well as a new approach to Ballmanns rank rigidity conjecture.
We give an algorithm which computes the fixed subgroup and the stable image for any endomorphism of the free group of rank two $F_2$, answering for $F_2$ a question posed by Stallings in 1984 and a question of Ventura.