On the Direct Indecomposability of Infinite Irreducible Coxeter Groups and the Isomorphism Problem of Coxeter Groups

In this paper we prove that any irreducible Coxeter group of infinite order is directly indecomposable as an abstract group, without the finite rank assumption. The key ingredient of the proof is that we can determine, for an irreducible Coxeter group W , the centralizers in W of the normal subgroups of W that are generated by involutions. As a consequence, we show that the problem of deciding whether two general Coxeter groups are isomorphic, as abstract groups, is reduced to the case of irreducible Coxeter groups, withoutgroups, is reduced to the case of irreducible Coxeter groups, without assuming the finiteness of the number of the irreducible components or their ranks. We also give a description of the automorphism group of a general Coxeter group in terms of those of its irreducible components.