Homological stability fails for the Cremona groups, yet their stable homology is non-trivial

Abstract

The Cremona groups are the groups of all birational transformations of rational varieties, or, in other words, the groups of all automorphisms of rational function fields. These groups are traditionally studied one dimension at a time. Instead, we will consider the whole sequence as the dimension increases. This shift in perspective raises questions about 'convergence' and the 'limit'. Contrary to the standard expectation for families of automorphism groups, we show that the induced homomorphisms in homology are rarely injective or surjective. This means that homological stability does not hold for the Cremona groups. We can nevertheless consider their stable homology, and we show it is represented by a non-trivial infinite loop space.

17 pages, substantial revision, improved results on stable homology