Free properly discontinuous actions on homotopy surfaces (Q387389)

A homotopy surface of type \(M\) is a finite dimensional CW complex with the same homotopy as a surface \(M\). In the paper under review, the author studies when a discrete group \(G\) acts on a homotopy surface freely properly discontinuously and cellularly. One of the main results of this paper is that the existence of such a \(G\)-action on a homotopy surface \(X\) of type \(M\) (which is not \(S^2\) or \(\mathbb{R} P^2\)) is equivalent to the existence of a group extension \(1\to \pi_{1}(M)\to \Gamma\to G\to 1\), where \(\Gamma\) is a group with \(\text{cd}\Gamma<\infty\) (Proposition 3.1). Here, \(\text{cd}\Gamma\) is the cohomological dimension of a group \(\Gamma\), i.e., the projective dimension of \(\mathbb{Z}\) over the integral group ring \(\mathbb{Z}\Gamma\). This result may be regarded as the generalization of Fujii's theorem of the finite group actions on surfaces \(M\) [\textit{K. Fujii}, Hiroshima Math. J. 5, 261--267 (1975; Zbl 0305.57036)]. As an application of this result, the author shows that a torsion free group \(G\) with \(\text{cd}G=\infty\) cannot act properly discontinuously and cellularly on any homotopy surface of type \(M\) which is not \(S^2\), \(\mathbb{R} P^2\), the torus or the Klein bottle (Theorem 5.2). The author obtains several interesting results and classifications about discrete group actions on homotopy surfaces or aspherical manifolds by using the notion of (virtual) cohomological dimension and the technique of group extensions.