We study the acylindrical hyperbolicity of groups acting by isometries on CAT(0) cube complexes, and obtain simple criteria formulated in terms of stabilisers for the action. Namely, we show that a group acting essentially and non-elementarily on a finite dimensional irreducible CAT(0) cube complex is acylindrically hyperbolic if there exist two hyperplanes whose stabilisers intersect along a finite subgroup. We also give further conditions on the geometry of the complex so that the result holds if we only require the existence of a single pair of points whose stabilisers intersect along a finite subgroup.

These are notes from a mini-course lectured by Denis Osin on acylindrically hyperbolic groups given at Beyond Hyperbolicity in Cambridge in June 2016. In this course we will be looking at acylindrically hyperbolic groups. Such groups make up a large portion of the "universe of finitely presented groups" described in Martin Bridson's course. Through examples of such groups we shall see that this class is indeed a large portion of the universe, but we shall also see that there is much we can prove. In particular, we will discuss results on small-cancellation theory and Dehn fillings, as well as some newer results.