%0 Journal Article %T Combinatorial Methods for Detecting Surface Subgroups in Right-Angled Artin Groups %A Robert W. Bell %J Mathematics %D 2010 %I arXiv %X We give a short proof of the following theorem of Sang-hyun Kim: if $A(\Gamma)$ is a right-angled Artin group with defining graph $\Gamma$, then $A(\Gamma)$ contains a hyperbolic surface subgroup if $\Gamma$ contains an induced subgraph $\bar{C}_n$ for some $n \geq 5$, where $\bar{C}_n$ denotes the complement graph of an $n$-cycle. Furthermore, we give a new proof of Kim's co-contraction theorem. %U http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.4208v1