Related papers: Some arithmetic groups that do not act on the circ…

We establish lower bounds on the dimensions in which arithmetic groups with torsion can act on acyclic manifolds and homology spheres. The bounds rely on the existence of elementary p-groups in the groups concerned. In some cases, including…

We construct a finitely presented, infinite, simple group that acts by homeomorphisms on the circle, but does not admit a non-trivial action by $C^1$-diffeomorphisms on the circle. The group emerges as a group of piecewise projective…

In this partly expository monograph we develop a general framework for producing uncountable families of exotic actions of certain classically studied groups acting on the circle. We show that if $L$ is a nontrivial limit group then the…

A free action of a finite group on an odd-dimensional sphere is said to be almost linear if the action restricted to each cyclic or 2-hyperelementary subgroup is conjugate to a free linear action. We begin this survey paper by reviewing the…

Let S be a connected orientable surface with finitely many punctures, finitely many boundary components, and genus at least 6. Then any C^1 action of the mapping class group of S on the circle is trivial. The techniques used in the proof of…

We study algebraic properties of groups of PL or smooth homeomorphisms of unit cubes in any dimension, fixed pointwise on the boundary, and more generally PL or smooth groups acting on manifolds and fixing pointwise a submanifold of…

A finite nonabelian simple group does not admit a free action on a homology sphere, and the only finite simple group which acts on a homology sphere with at most 0-dimensional fixed point sets ("pseudofree action") is the alternating group…

We show that the group of germs at infinity of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of R admits no action on the line. This gives an example of a left-orderable group of the same cardinality as Homeo+(R) that does not embed in Homeo+(R).…

In a pervious paper Weidmann shows that there a bound on the number of orbits of edges in a tree on which a finitely generated group acts $(k,C)$-acylindrically. In this paper we extend this result to actions which are $k$-acylindrical…

In these lectures we consider how algebraic properties of discrete subgroups of Lie groups restrict the possible actions of those groups on surfaces. The results show a strong parallel between the possible actions of such a group on the…

We study groups of C^1 orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the plane, and pursue analogies between such groups and circularly-orderable groups. We show that every such group with a bounded orbit is circularly-orderable, and show that…

We survey rigidity results for groups acting on the circle in various settings, from local to global and $C^0$ to smooth. Our primary focus is on actions of surface groups, with the aim of introducing the reader to recent developments and…

Let D be an irreducible lattice in a connected, semisimple Lie group G with finite center. Assume that the real rank of G is at least two, that G/D is not compact, and that G has more than one noncompact simple factor. We show that D has no…

Motivated by the recent result that left-orderability of a group $G$ is intimately connected to circular orderability of direct products $G \times \mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, we provide necessary and sufficient cohomological conditions that…

Let $\mathrm{SL}_{n}(\mathbb{Z})$ $(n\geq 3)$ be the special linear group and $M^{r}$ be a closed aspherical manifold. It is proved that when $r<n,$ a group action of $\mathrm{SL}_{n}(\mathbb{Z})$ on $M^{r}$ by homeomorphisms is trivial if…

We prove that the group $\mathrm{QI}^{+}(\mathbb{R})$ of orientation-preserving quasi-isometries of the real line is a left-orderable, non-simple group, which cannot act effectively on the real line $\mathbb{R}.$

The kinematics of SL(2,R) Yang-Mills theory on a circle is considered, for reasons that are spelled out. The gauge transformations exhibit hyperbolic fixed points, and this results in a physical configuration space with a non-Hausdorff…

There are four groups $G$ fitting into a short exact sequence $ 1\rightarrow SL(2,5)\rightarrow G\rightarrow C_2\rightarrow 1, $ where $SL(2,5)$ is the special linear group of $(2\times 2)$-matrices with entries in the field of five…

The group SL(n,Z) admits a smooth faithful action on the (n-1)-sphere S^(n-1), induced from its linear action on euclidean space R^n. We show that, if m < n-1 and n > 2, any smooth action of SL(n,Z) on a mod 2 homology m-sphere, and in…

We study the smooth untwisted cohomology with real coefficients for the action on [SL(2, R) \times \cdot \cdot \cdot \times SL(2, R)]/{\Gamma} by the subgroup of diagonal matrices, where {\Gamma} is an irreducible lattice. In the top…