A-GENERALIZATION-OF-THE-LYNDON–HOCHSCHILD–SERRE-SPECTRAL-SEQUENCE-WITH-APPLICATIONS-TO-GROUP-COHOMOLOGY.pdfVIP

A GENERALIZATION OF THE LYNDON–HOCHSCHILD–SERRE SPECTRAL SEQUENCE WITH APPLICATIONS TO GROUP COHOMOLOGY AND DECOMPOSITIONS OF GROUPS P. H. KROPHOLLER ABSTRACT. We set up a Grothendieck spectral sequence which generalizes the Lyndon–Hochschild–Serre spectral sequence for a group extension K ֌ G ։ Q by allowing the normal subgroup K to be replaced by a subgroup, or family of subgroups which satisfy a weaker condition than normality. This is applied to establish a decomposition theorem for certain groups as fundamental groups of graphs of Poincaré duality groups. We further illustrate the method by proving a cohomological vanishing theorem which applies for example to Thompson’s group F . For motivation consider a finitely generated group G of cohomological dimen- sion n + 1 over Z, where n is a non-negative integer. Suppose that H is a polycyclic subgroup of G which has Hirsch length n. If H is normal in G then a Lyndon– Hochschild–Serre spectral sequence corner argument shows that the quotient group G/H has more than one end. By a classical result of Stallings it follows that G/H splits as a non-trivial amalgamated free product or HNN-extension over a finite subgroup and so G itself splits over a subgroup in which H has finite index. If H is not normal then there may be no splitting over any subgroup related to H . In [9] Dunwoody and Swenson consider a situation like this, but rather than imposing a cohomological dimension condition they consider the notion of codimension one by which they mean that the number of ends of the pair (G,H ) is ≥ 2. Here, we can think of the spectral sequence corner argument as a device which proves that when H is normal then it has codimension one in the sense of Dunwoody and Swenson. One could