  We prove that many Artin groups of large type satisfy the rapid decay
property, including all those of extra-large type. For many of these, including
all 3-generator groups of extra-large type, a result of Lafforgue applies to
show that the groups satisfy the Baum-Connes conjecture without coefficients.
  Our proof of rapid decay combines elementary analysis with combinatorial
techniques, and relies on properties of geodesic words in Artin groups of large
type that were observed in an earlier publication by two of the authors of this
current article.
