English

Abelianization of some groups of interval exchanges

Group Theory 2020-09-17 v1

Abstract

Let IET be the group of bijections from [0,1[\mathopen{[}0,1 \mathclose{[} to itself that are continuous outside a finite set, right-continuous and piecewise translations. The abelianization homomorphism f:IETAf: \text{IET} \to A, called SAF-homomorphism, was described by Arnoux-Fathi and Sah. The abelian group AA is the second exterior power of the reals over the rationals. For every subgroup Γ\Gamma of R/Z\mathbb{R/Z} we define IET(Γ)\text{IET}(\Gamma) as the subgroup of IET\text{IET} consisting of all elements ff such that ff is continuous outside Γ\Gamma. Let Γ~\tilde{\Gamma} be the preimage of Γ\Gamma in R\mathbb{R}. We establish an isomorphism between the abelianization of IET(Γ)\text{IET}(\Gamma) and the second skew-symmetric power of Γ~\tilde{\Gamma} over Z\mathbb{Z} denoted by  ⁣ ⁣Z2Γ~{}^\circleddash\!\!\bigwedge^2_{\mathbb{Z}} \tilde{\Gamma}. This group often has non-trivial 22-torsion, which is not detected by the SAF-homomorphism. We then define IET\text{IET}^{\bowtie} the group of all interval exchange transformations with flips. Arnoux proved that this group is simple thus perfect. However for every subgroup IET(Γ)\text{IET}^{\bowtie}(\Gamma) we establish an isomorphism between its abelianization and {aa [mod 2]aΓ~}×{ [mod 2]Γ~}\langle \lbrace a \otimes a ~ [\text{mod}~2] \mid a \in \tilde{\Gamma} \rbrace \rangle \times \langle \lbrace \ell \wedge \ell ~ [\text{mod}~2] \mid \ell \in \tilde{\Gamma} \rbrace \rangle which is a 22-elementary abelian subgroup of Z2Γ~/(2Z2Γ~)× ⁣ ⁣Z2Γ~/(2 ⁣ ⁣Z2Γ~)\bigotimes^2_{\mathbb{Z}} \tilde{\Gamma} / (2\bigotimes^2_{\mathbb{Z}} \tilde{\Gamma}) \times {}^\circleddash\!\!\bigwedge^2_{\mathbb{Z}} \tilde{\Gamma} / (2 {}^\circleddash\!\!\bigwedge^2_{\mathbb{Z}} \tilde{\Gamma}).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.07595,
  title  = {Abelianization of some groups of interval exchanges},
  author = {Octave Lacourte},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.07595},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

42 pages, 9 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T18:34:54.821Z