Stabilizing surface symmetries (Q1071360)

For certain (e.g., abelian, metacyclic) groups, actions of the group on a surface have been classified up to (the usual notion of) equivalence by free bordism. Now, given an action of G on a surface M, the author defines a ''stabilized'' action on the connected sum M {\#}\({}_ k T^ 2\) (where \(k=| G|\) and the tori are attached on the orbit of some regular neighborhood in M) by permuting the toral summands. Two actions are stably equivalent if they become equivalent under (possibly repeated) stabilization. The author then shows that, for any finite group, two free, orientation preserving actions on respective connected, closed, oriented surfaces are stably equivalent if and only if they are freely bordant. Thus, understanding equivalence of actions on surfaces is reduced to understanding the passage from stable equivalence to equivalence. After proving the main result, the author discusses modifications which pertain to the more general situations of allowing nonorientable surfaces (in which case ''stabilization'' requires a connected sum with Klein bottles as well as tori) or nonfree actions (where it is sometimes sufficient to simply add the assumption of identical fixed point data).