Free planar actions of the Klein bottle group

Abstract

We describe the structure of the free actions of the Klein bottle group by orientation preserving homeomorphisms of the plane. This group is generated by two elements $a,b$, where the conjugate of $b$ by $a$ equals the inverse of $b$. The main result is that $a$ must act properly discontinuously, while $b$ cannot act properly discontinuously. As a corollary, we describe some torsion free groups that cannot act freely on the plane. We also find some properties which are reminiscent of Brouwer theory for the infinite cyclic group $Z$, in particular that every free action is virtually wandering.

References in corpus (1)

• Structure des homeomorphismes de Brouwer