Due to work of W. Parry it is known that the growth rate of a hyperbolic Coxeter group acting cocompactly on ${\mathbb H^3}$ is a Salem number. This being the arithmetic situation, we prove that the simplex group (3,5,3) has smallest growth rate among all cocompact hyperbolic Coxeter groups, and that it is as such unique. Our approach provides a different proof for the analog situation in ${\mathbb H^2}$ where E. Hironaka identified Lehmer's number as the minimal growth rate among all cocompact planar hyperbolic Coxeter groups and showed that it is (uniquely) achieved by the Coxeter triangle group (3,7).

Given a complete CAT(0) space $X$ endowed with a geometric action of a group $\Gamma$, it is known that if $\Gamma$ contains a free abelian group of rank $n$, then $X$ contains a geometric flat of dimension $n$. We prove the converse of this statement in the special case where $X$ is a convex subcomplex of the CAT(0) realization of a Coxeter group $W$, and $\Gamma$ is a subgroup of $W$. In particular a convex cocompact subgroup of a Coxeter group is Gromov-hyperbolic if and only if it does not contain a free abelian group of rank 2. Our result also provides an explicit control on geometric flats in the CAT(0) realization of arbitrary Tits buildings.

Let $G$ be a finite group generated by (pseudo-) reflections in a complex vector space and let $g$ be any linear transformation which normalises $G$. In an earlier paper, the authors showed how to associate with any maximal eigenspace of an element of the coset $gG$, a subquotient of $G$ which acts as a reflection group on the eigenspace. In this work, we address the questions of irreducibility and the coexponents of this subquotient, as well as centralisers in $G$ of certain elements of the coset. A criterion is also given in terms of the invariant degrees of $G$ for an integer to be regular for $G$. A key tool is the investigation of extensions of invariant vector fields on the eigenspace, which leads to some results and questions concerning the geometry of intersections of invariant hypersurfaces.