Vanishing theorems and conjectures for the, ell ²--homology of right-angled Coxeter groups

Associated to any finite flag complex L there is a right-angled Coxeter group W_L and a cubical complex \Sigma_L on which W_L acts properly and cocompactly. Its two most salient features are that (1) the link of each vertex of \Sigma_L is L and (2) \Sigma_L is contractible. It follows that if L is a triangulation of S^{n-1}, then \Sigma_L is a contractible n-manifold. We describe a program for proving the Singer Conjecture (on the vanishing of the reduced L^2-homology except in the middle dimension) in the case of \Sigma_L where L is a triangulation of S^{n-1}. The program succeeds when n < 5. This implies the Charney-Davis Conjecture on flag triangulations of S^3. It also implies the following special case of the Hopf-Chern Conjecture: every closed 4-manifold with a nonpositively curved, piecewise Euclidean, cubical structure has nonnegative Euler characteristic. Our methods suggest the following generalization of the Singer Conjecture. Conjecture: If a discrete group G acts properly on a contractible n-manifold, then its L^2-Betti numbers b_i^{(2)} (G)$ vanish for i>n/2.