Automorphisms of 2–dimensional right-angled Artin groups

We study the outer automorphism group of a right-angled Artin group AA in the case where the defining graph A is connected and triangle-free. We give an algebraic description of Out.AA/ in terms of maximal join subgraphs in A and prove that the Tits’ alternative holds for Out.AA/. We construct an analogue of outer space for Out.AA/ and prove that it is finite dimensional, contractible, and has a proper action of Out.AA/. We show that Out.AA/ has finite virtual cohomological dimension, give upper and lower bounds on this dimension and construct a spine for outer space realizing the most general upper bound. 20F36; 20F65, 20F28