English

Smooth perfectness for the group of diffeomorphisms

Differential Geometry 2012-01-12 v3

Abstract

Given a result of Herman, we provide a new elementary proof of the fact that the connected component of the group of compactly supported diffeomorphisms is perfect and hence simple. Moreover, we show that every diffeomorphism gg, which is sufficiently close to the identity, can be represented as a product of four commutators, g=[h1,k1]...[h4,k4]g=[h_1,k_1]\circ...\circ[h_4,k_4], where the factors hih_i and kik_i can be chosen to depend smoothly on gg.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0409605,
  title  = {Smooth perfectness for the group of diffeomorphisms},
  author = {Stefan Haller and Tomasz Rybicki and Josef Teichmann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0409605},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

Fully revised and extended second version of our paper math.DG/0409605 with improved results. Tomasz Rybicki contributed substantially to this second version and joined us as third author

R2 v1 2026-07-22T17:10:28.897Z