A note on the scatteredness of reflection orders

Abstract: In this note, we characterize affine Coxeter systems among all Coxeter systems in terms of the structure of their reflection orders. For an infinite irreducible system $(W,S)$, we show that affineness is equivalently characterized by the scatteredness of all reflection orders, by the existence of a reflection order of type $ω+ω^*$, and by a finiteness property of intervals determined by dihedral reflection subgroups. Our proof exploits the geometry of projective roots, the isotropic cone and the universal reflection subgroups in an infinite non-affine Coxeter group.