Quasiconformal and affine groups (Q1118167)

Suppose that G is a discrete group of diffeomorphisms acting on the unit sphere \(S^ n\) of \({\mathbb{R}}^{n+1}\). G is called admissible if it contains an infinite cyclic virtually central subgroup. (Recall that a subgroup H of G is called virtually central if the commutator [G,H] is finite.) The main result of the paper is that if G is admissible and has uniformly bounded distortion, then G is conjugate, by a self- homeomorphism of \(S^ n\) with bounded distortion, to a conformal group of \(S^ n\). It is shown that, under some restrictions, the parabolic and loxodromic elements of a uniformly quasiconformal group are quasiconformally conjugate to conformal transformations and good bounds are obtained on the dilatation of the conjugating mapping.