Some arithmetic groups that do not act on the circle

zbMATH Open1440.20014arXiv1210.3671MaRDI QIDQ5116462FDOQ5116462

David Witte Morris

Publication date: 25 August 2020

Abstract: The group SL(3,Z) cannot act (faithfully) on the circle (by homeomorphisms). We will see that many other arithmetic groups also cannot act on the circle. The discussion will involve several important topics in group theory, such as ordered groups, amenability, bounded generation, and bounded cohomology. Lecture 1 provides an introduction to the subject, and uses the theory of left-orderable groups to prove that SL(3,Z) does not act on the circle. Lecture 2 discusses bounded generation, and proves that groups of the form SL(2,Z[a]) do not act on the real line. Lectures 3 and 4 are brief introductions to amenable groups and bounded cohomology, respectively. They also explain how these ideas can be used to prove that actions on the circle have finite orbits. An appendix provides hints or references for all of the exercises. These notes are slightly expanded from talks given at the Park City Mathematics Institute's Graduate Summer School in July 2012.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.3671

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Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Geometric group theory (20F65) Discrete subgroups of Lie groups (22E40) Dynamics induced by group actions other than (mathbb{Z}) and (mathbb{R}), and (mathbb{C}) (37C85) Cohomology of groups (20J06) Harmonic analysis on general compact groups (43A77) Structure of modular groups and generalizations; arithmetic groups (11F06)

Cited In (2)

• Arithmetic Groups of Higher ℚ-Rank Cannot Act on 1-Manifolds
• Extensions of invariant random orders on groups

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