Chain groups of homeomorphisms of the interval

Abstract

We introduce and study the notion of a chain group of homeomorphisms of a one-manifold, which is a certain generalization of Thompson's group $F$. The resulting class of groups exhibits a combination of uniformity and diversity. On the one hand, a chain group either has a simple commutator subgroup or the action of the group has a wandering interval. In the latter case, the chain group admits a canonical quotient which is also a chain group, and which has a simple commutator subgroup. On the other hand, every finitely generated subgroup of ${\mathrm{Homeo}}^{+}(I)$ can be realized as a subgroup of a chain group. As a corollary, we show that there are uncountably many isomorphism types of chain groups, as well as uncountably many isomorphism types of countable simple subgroups of ${\mathrm{Homeo}}^{+}(I)$. We consider the restrictions on chain groups imposed by actions of various regularities, and show that there are uncountably many isomorphism types of $3$--chain groups which cannot be realized by $C^2$ diffeomorphisms, as well as uncountably many isomorphism types of $6$--chain groups which cannot be realized by $C^1$ diffeomorphisms. As a corollary, we obtain uncountably many isomorphism types of simple subgroups of ${\mathrm{Homeo}}^{+}(I)$ which admit no nontrivial $C^1$ actions on the interval. Finally, we show that if a chain group acts minimally on the interval, then it does so uniquely up to topological conjugacy.

24 pages, 4 figues. To appear in Ann. Sci. de l'ENS

References in corpus (1)

• Uncountably many groups of type $FP$

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Non-triviality of the Poisson boundary of random walks on the group $H(\mathbb{Z})$ of Monod