A systolic inequality for 2-complexes of maximal cup-length and systolic area of groups

Abstract: We extend a systolic inequality of Guth for Riemannian manifolds of maximal $\mathbb{Z}_2$ cup-length to piecewise Riemannian complexes of dimension 2. As a consequence we improve the previous best universal lower bound for the systolic area of groups for a large class of groups, including free abelian and surface groups, most of irreducible 3-manifold groups, non-free Artin groups and Coxeter groups (or more generally), groups containing an element of order 2.