Abstract

This thesis deals with combinatorics in connection with Coxeter groups, finitely generated but not necessarily finite. The representation theory of groups as nonsingular matrices over a field is of immense theoretical importance, but also basic for computational group theory, where the group elements are data structures in a computer. Matrices are unnecessarily large structures, and part of this thesis is concerned with small and efficient representations of a large class of Coxeter groups (including most Coxeter groups that anyone ever payed any attention to.) The main contents of the thesis can be summarized as follows. • We prove that for all Coxeter graphs constructed from an n-path of unlabelled edges by adding a new labelled edge and a new vertex (sometimes two new edges and vertices), there is a permutational representation of the corresponding group. Group elements correspond to integer n-sequences and the nodes in the path generate all n! permutations. The extra node has a more complicated action, adding a certain quantity to some of the numbers.