Simple groups of birational transformations in dimension two (Q784192)

The Cremona group \(\mathrm{Cr}_2(\mathbb{C})\) is the group of birational transformations of the complex projective plane \(\mathbb{P}^2\). It was a long-standing question whether \(\mathrm{Cr}_n(\mathbb{C})\) is simple group. Several years ago Serge Cantat and Stéphane Lamy made a breakthrough in [\textit{S. Cantat} et al., Acta Math. 210, No. 1, 31--94 (2013; Zbl 1278.14017)] by proving that \(\mathrm{Cr}_2(\mathbb{C})\) is not simple. In the paper under review, the author classifies simple subgroups of \(\mathrm{Cr}_2(\mathbb{C})\). Cantat-Lamy used a hyperbolic space on which the Cremona group acts. Elements of the Cremona group are divided into three types according to this action: loxodromic, parabolic or elliptic. The bulk of the paper under review is to prove that a simple subgroup of \(\mathrm{Cr}_2(\mathbb{C})\) does not contain any loxodromic element. Based on this result the author deduced that 1) any simple subgroup of \(\mathrm{Cr}_2(\mathbb{C})\) is isomorphic to a subgroup of \(\mathrm{PGL}(2,\mathbb{C})\); 2) any finitely generated subgroup of \(\mathrm{Cr}_2(\mathbb{C})\) is finite. As a corollary the author obtains a complete list of finite simple subgroups of \(\mathrm{Cr}_2(\mathbb{C})\).