Linearity, crystallographic quotients, and automorphisms of virtual Artin groups

Virtual Artin groups were recently introduced by Bellingeri, Paris, and Thiel as broad generalizations of the well-known virtual braid groups. For each Coxeter graph $\Gamma$, they defined the virtual Artin group $VA[\Gamma]$, which is generated by the corresponding Artin group $A[\Gamma]$ and the Coxeter group $W[\Gamma]$, subject to certain mixed relations inspired by the action of $W[\Gamma]$ on its root system $\Phi[\Gamma]$. There is a natural surjection $ \mathrm{VA}[\Gamma] \rightarrow W[\Gamma]$, with the kernel $PVA[\Gamma]$ representing the pure virtual Artin group. In this paper, we explore linearity, crystallographic quotients, and automorphisms of certain classes of virtual Artin groups. Inspired from the work of Cohen, Wales, and Krammer, we construct a linear representation of the virtual Artin group $VA[\Gamma]$. As a consequence of this representation, we deduce that if $W[\Gamma]$ is a spherical Coxeter group, then $VA[\Gamma]/PVA[\Gamma]'$ is a crystallographic group of dimension $ |\Phi[\Gamma]|$ with the holonomy group $W[\Gamma]$. Further, extending an idea of Davis and Januszkiewicz, we prove that all right-angled virtual Artin groups admit a faithful linear representation. The remainder of the paper focuses on conjugacy classes and automorphisms of a subclass of right-angled virtual Artin groups, $VAT_n$, associated with planar braid groups called twin groups. We determine the automorphism group of $VAT_n$ for each $n\geq 5$, and give a precise description of a generic automorphism. As an application of this description, we prove that $VAT_n$ has the $R_\infty$-property for each $n \ge 2$.