Distortion for diffeomorphisms of surfaces with boundary

Publication date 16 February 2012

Abstract: If

G

is a finitely generated group with generators

g_{1}, ..., g_{s}

, we say an infinite-order element

f i n G

is a distortion element of

G

provided that

d i s p l a y s t y l e l i m i n f_{n o i n f t y} f r a c | f^{n} | n = 0

, where

| f^{n} |

is the word length of

f^{n}

with respect to the given generators. Let

S

be a compact orientable surface, possibly with boundary, and let

D i f f (S)_{0}

denote the identity component of the group of

C^{1}

diffeomorphisms of

S

. Our main result is that if

S

has genus at least two, and

f

is a distortion element in some finitely generated subgroup of

D i f f (S)_{0}

, then

s u p p (m u) s u b s e t e q F i x (f)

for every

f

-invariant Borel probability measure

m u

. Under a small additional hypothesis the same holds in lower genus. For

m u

a Borel probability measure on

S

, denote the group of

C^{1}

diffeomorphisms that preserve

m u

by

D i f f_{m} u (S)

. Our main result implies that a large class of higher-rank lattices admit no homomorphisms to

D i f f_{m u} (S)

with infinite image. These results generalize those of Franks and Handel to surfaces with boundary.

This page was built for publication: Distortion for diffeomorphisms of surfaces with boundary