Chaotic group actions (Q5917722)

Summary: We introduce the notion of chaotic group actions and give a preliminary report on their properties. In particular, we show that a group \(G\) possesses a faithful chaotic action on some Hausdorff space if and only if \(G\) is residually finite. This gives an elementary unified proof of the residual finiteness of certain groups. We also show that the circle does not admit a chaotic action of any group, whilst every smooth compact surface admits of chaotic \(\mathbb{Z}\)-action.