Related papers: Strong distortion in transformation groups

We exhibit rigid rotations of spheres as distortion elements in groups of diffeomorphisms, thereby answering a question of J Franks and M Handel. We also show that every homeomorphism of a sphere is, in a suitable sense, as distorted as…

The fundamental group of a closed irreducible 3-dimensional manifold has the Rapid Decay property if and only if it is not virtually Sol. This is proved by studying distortion of length functions in graphs of groups, and the stability of…

A group G is called bounded if every conjugation-invariant norm on G has finite diameter. We introduce various strengthenings of this property and investigate them in several classes of groups including semisimple Lie groups, arithmetic…

Let $M$ be a complete connected Riemannian manifold of finite volume. In this paper we present a new method of constructing classes in bounded cohomology of transformation groups such as $Homeo_0(M,\mu)$, $Diff_0(M,vol)$ and…

The set of automorphisms of a one-dimensional \shift $(X, \sigma)$ forms a countable, but often very complicated, group. For zero entropy shifts, it has recently been shown that the automorphism group is more tame. We provide the first…

We prove that the groups of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms and diffeomorphisms of $\mathbb{R}^n$ are boundedly acyclic, in all regularities. This is the first full computation of the bounded cohomology of a transformation group that…

Permutation products and their various "fat diagonal" subspaces are studied from the topological and geometric point of view. We describe in detail the stabilizer and orbit stratifications related to the permutation action, producing a…

It is shown that there exist infinitely many non-integers $r>2$ such that the Dehn function of some finitely presented group is $\simeq n^r$. For each positive rational number $s$ we construct pairs of finitely presented groups $H\subset G$…

In this paper we study boundedness of bundle diffeomorphism groups over a circle. For a fiber bundle $\pi : M \to S^1$ with fiber $N$ and structure group $\Gamma$ and $r \in {\Bbb Z}_{\geq 0} \cup \{ \infty \}$ we distinguish an integer $k…

In this article, we characterize the distortion elements of the group of smooth diffeomorphisms of the circle and of the group of compactly supported smooth diffeomorphisms of the real line. More precisely, we prove that, in this context,…

We use differential forms on loop spaces to prove that the fundamental group of certain geometric transformation groups is infinite. Examples include both finite and infinite dimensional Lie groups. The finite dimensional examples are the…

This paper establishes robust obstructions to representing Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms as $k$-th powers ($k \geq 2$) or embedding them in flows for certain higher-dimensional symplectic manifolds $(M,\omega)$, including surface bundles. We…

For all integers $k, m > 0$, we construct a virtually special group $G$ containing a finite rank free subgroup $F$ whose distortion function in $G$ grows like $\exp^k(x^m)$. We also construct examples of virtually special groups containing…

It is shown that certain diffeomorphism or homeomorphism groups with no restriction on support of an open manifold with finite number of ends are bounded. It follows that these groups are uniformly perfect. In order to characterize the…

Let $H := \begin{pmatrix} 1 & {\mathbf R} & {\mathbf R} \\ 0 & 1 &{\mathbf R} \\ 0 & 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix}$ denote the Heisenberg group with the usual Carnot-Carath\'eodory metric $d$. It is known (since the work of Pansu and Semmes) that the…

We show that the (topological) full group of a minimal pseudogroup over the Cantor set satisfies various rigidity phenomena of topological dynamical and combinatorial nature. Our main result applies to its possible homomorphisms into other…

In the infinite dimensional Heisenberg group, we construct a left invariant weak Riemannian metric that gives a degenerate geodesic distance. The same construction yields a degenerate sub-Riemannian distance. We show how the standard notion…

We apply the framework of Rosendal to study the large-scale geometry of the topological groups $\Diff_+^k(M^1)$, consisting of orientation-preserving $C^k$-diffeomorphisms (for $1\leq k\leq\infty$) of a compact $1$-manifold $M^1$ ($=I$ or…

Let $M$ and $N$ be compact smooth oriented Riemannian $n$-manifolds without boundary embedded in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$. Several problems about minimal distortion bending and morphing of $M$ to $N$ are posed. Cost functionals that measure…

Let $G$ be the group ${\rm PAff}_+({\bf S}^1)$ of piecewise--affine circle homeomorphisms or the group ${\Diff}^{\infty}(\mathbb R/\mathbb Z)$ of smooth circle diffeomorphisms. A constructive proof that all irrational rotations are…