Discrete locally finite full groups of Cantor set homeomorphisms

This work is motivated by the problem of finding locally compact group topologies for piecewise full groups (a.k.a.~ topological full groups). We determine that any piecewise full group that is locally compact in the compact-open topology on the group of self-homeomorphisms of the Cantor set must be uniformly discrete, in a precise sense that we introduce here. Uniformly discrete groups of self-homeomorphisms of the Cantor set are in particular countable, locally finite, residually finite and discrete in the compact-open topology. The resulting piecewise full groups form a subclass of the ample groups introduced by Krieger. We determine the structure of these groups by means of their Bratteli diagrams and associated dimension ranges ($K_0$ groups). We show through an example that not all uniformly discrete piecewise full groups are subgroups of the ``obvious'' ones, namely, piecewise full groups of finite groups.