Hyperbolic and cubical rigidities of Thompson's group \(V\) (Q667026)

A group is said be hyperbolically elementary if every isometric action on a hyperbolic space either fixes a point at infinity, or stabilises a pair of points at infinity, or has bounded orbits. Obviously, such a property imposes restrictions on the possible homomorphisms between two groups. It is worth noting that a hyperbolically elementary group either satisfies Serre's Property (\(FA\)) or surjects onto \(\mathbb{Z}\) or \(D_{\infty }\), so that hyperbolically elementary is essentially a generalisation of property (\(FA\)). The first main result of this article is: Theorem 1. (Theorem 4.1 in the paper). Let \(G\) be a group. Suppose that there exist two subsets \(A \subset B \subset G\) satisfying the following conditions. \(\bullet\)\quad \(G\) is boundedly generated by \(A\), i.e. there exists some \(N\geq 0\) such that every element of \(G\) is the product of at most \(N\) elements of \(A\). \(\bullet\) \quad For every \(a,\, b \in B\), there exist \(g,h\in G\) such that \([gag^{-1},a]= [gag^{-1},hgag^{-1}h^{-1}]= [hgag^{-1}h^{-1},b]=1\). \(\bullet\) \quad For every \(a,b \in G\) there exist some \(h,h_{1},h_{2},\,\dots ,h_{r}\in B\) such that the following holds. For every \(k\in A\) there exists some \(f\in \langle h_{1} \rangle \cdots \langle h_{r} \rangle\) such that the elements \(fkf^{-1}h, fkf^{-1}ha\) and \(fkf^{-1}hb\) all belong to \(B\). Then any isometric action of \(G\) on a hyperbolic space fixes a point at infinity, or stabilises a pair of points at infinity, or has bounded orbits. This result is motivated by the necessity to prove that Thompson's group \(V\) is hyperbolically elementary. Theorem 2. (Theorem 4.6 in the paper). Any isometric action of Thompson's group \(V\)on a Gromov-hyperbolic space either fixes a unique point at infinity or has a bounded orbit. The initial motivation in proving this theorem came from another fixed-point property, in the class of \(CAT(0)\) cube complexes. More precisely it is proved: Theorem 3. (Theorem 5.1 in the paper). A finitely generated group all of whose finite-index subgroups are hyperbolically elementary, and do not surject onto \(\mathbb{Z}\) satisfies property \((FW_{\infty })\). Here we quote the definition of \((FW_{\ast})\) properties. Let \(G\) be a group. \(G\) satisfies property \((FW_{n})\), for some \(n\geq 0\), if every isometric action of \(G\) on an \(n\)-dimensional \(\mathrm{CAT}(0)\) cube complex has a global fixed point. \(G\) satisfies property \((FW_{\infty })\) if it satisfies property \((FW_{n})\) for every \(n\geq 0\) \(G\) satisfies property \((FW)\) for some \(n\geq 0\) if every isometric action of \(G\) on a \(\mathrm{CAT}(0)\) cube complex has a global fixed point. Since Thompson's group \(V\) is simple, the combination of the previous results immediately implies: Corollary. (Corollary 1.4 in the paper). Any isometric action of Thompson's group \(V\) on a finite-dimensional (\(\mathrm{CAT}(0)\)) cube complex fixes a point. As a consequence. \(V\) provides another negative answer to a question in [\textit{I. Chatterji} (ed.), Enseign. Math. (2) 54, No. 1--2, 3--189 (2008; Zbl 1407.00046)], i.e. \(V\) is a new example of a group satisfying property \((FW_{\infty })\) but not Kazhdan's property \((T)\). At the end, the author remarks that Thompson's group \(F\) is also hyperbolically elementary but it does not satisfy property \((FW_{\infty })\) since its abelianisation is infinite. About the Thompson's group \(T\), the situation is less clear and the author asked the: Question. Is Thompson's group \(T\) hyperbolocally elementary? Does it satisfy property \((FW_{\infty })\)? This question has been answered merely in [\textit{M. Kato}, ``On groups whose actions on finite-dimensional CAT(0) spaces have global fixed points'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1804.10506}] that the group \(T\) satisfies property \((FW_{\infty })\), but remains open for the hyperbolic elementarity of \(T\).