Finitely generated infinite simple groups of homeomorphisms of the real line (Q2322814)

Akbar Rhemtulla asked in 1980 whether there is a finitely generated, simple, left orderable group. Here a group is said to be left orderable if it admits a total order which is invariant under left multiplication. The question appears among others in the Kourovka Notebook No. 18. Since a countable group can be embedded in the group \(\operatorname{Homeo}^{+}(\mathbb{R})\) of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the real line precisely when it is left orderable, Rhemtulla's question can be restated as asking whether there is a finitely generated, simple group of homeomorphisms of the real line, as a group with the latter properties must be orientation-preserving. \(\operatorname{Homeo}^{+}(\mathbb{R})\) contains many countable, not finitely generated simple groups, as shown for instance in a paper by \textit{S. Kim}, \textit{T. Koberda} and the second author [``Chain groups of homeomorphisms of the interval'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1610.04099}], and there are examples of finitely presented, infinite simple groups of homeomorphisms of the circle. But there are several obstructions to constructions as in Rhemtulla's question, namely the Thurston Stability Theorem, and the germ homomorphism. The goal of the important, and lucidly written paper under review is to give a systematic construction of finitely generated, simple subgroups of \(\operatorname{Homeo}^{+}(\mathbb{R})\). The idea is to glue together two different non-standard actions of the group of orientation-preserving, piecewise linear homeomorphisms of the interval \([0, 1]\). Parameters for the construction are provided by certain abundant and easy to construct special quasi-periodic labelling \(\rho\) of \(\dfrac{1}{2}\mathbb{Z}\). To each such \(\rho\) one associates a finitely generated, simple subgroup \(G_{\rho}\) of \(\operatorname{Homeo}^{+}(\mathbb{R})\). Although this association is not injective, a generalisation of this constructions yields an uncountable family of pairwise non-isomorphic groups that satisfy the required conditions. The authors note that the groups constructed here can be taken as test cases for the open question, whether there is an infinite group of homeomorphisms of the real line that satisfies Kazhdan's property (T).