Expansion growth, entropy and invariant measures of distal groups and pseudogroups of homeo- and diffeomorphisms (Q379609)

Distal transformations have zero entropy in the usual sense, and equicontinuous groups have zero entropy in the sense of \textit{E. Ghys} et al. [Acta Math. 160, No. 1--2, 105--142 (1988; Zbl 0666.57021)]. The question of whether distal groups also have this property has been studied by \textit{A. Biś} and the author [Ann. Pol. Math. 100, No. 1, 45--54 (2011; Zbl 1217.37009)], and they showed that a finitely generated minimal distal group of linear growth acting as homeomorphisms of a compact metric space has zero entropy. An issue in any such question is the interplay between growth coming from the dynamics of the action and possible growth coming from the group itself (similar issues arise in understanding the growth in closed orbits for group actions, as discussed by \textit{R. Miles} and the reviewer [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 137, No. 4, 1499--1507 (2009; Zbl 1160.22005)]). Here vanishing of entropy is shown for minimal distal groups of manifold homeomorphisms under a different kind of condition, and an estimate is found for the expansion growth in the sense of \textit{S. Egashira} [Ann. Fac. Sci. Toulouse, Math. (6) 2, No. 1, 15--52 (1993; Zbl 0789.58063)] of distal groups with these conditions.