Direct products, overlapping actions, and critical regularity (Q2046803)

In this paper, the authors analyze groups of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the unit interval \(I=[0,1]\), with a specific focus on their critical regularity. Here the \emph{critical regularity} of a group \(G\) is the supremum of \(k+\tau\), for \(k\in\mathbb{N}\cup\{0\}\) and \(\tau\in [0,1)\), such that \(G\) admits a faithful action on \(I\) by homeomorphisms where the \(k\)th derivative of every element is \(\tau\)-Hölder continuous. Some examples of the sorts of results obtained here include that if \(G\) and \(H\) are non-solvable groups, then the critical regularity of \((G\times H)*\mathbb{Z}\) is at most \(1\) (Theorem~1.1), and for \(F_2\) the free group of rank \(2\) and \(F\) Thompson's group, the groups \((F_2\times F_2)*\mathbb{Z}\) and \(F*\mathbb{Z}\) have critical regularity exactly \(1\) (Corollary~1.2). The authors also investigate the consequences of \((F_2\times F_2)*\mathbb{Z}\) having critical regularity \(1\) for general right-angled Artin groups (RAAGs), namely, if the defining graph of a RAAG contains an induced square whose complement is connected, then the RAAG has critical regularity \(1\). This provides (a large class of) the first known examples of RAAGs whose critical regularities are finite and known exactly. One important idea throughout the paper is that of \emph{non-overlapping} actions, meaning actions in which there exist two non-trivial elements with disjoint support. The key result for many of the applications is Lemma~2.2, which says that any non-overlapping \(C^1\) action of \(G\) cannot possibly extend to a \(C^1\) action of \(G*\mathbb{Z}\). In particular, if every such action of \(G\) is non-overlapping then \(G*\mathbb{Z}\) admits no such action.