Related papers: Hyperbolicity as an obstruction to smoothability f…

We introduce and study the notion of a chain group of homeomorphisms of a one-manifold, which is a certain generalization of Thompson's group $F$. The resulting class of groups exhibits a combination of uniformity and diversity. On the one…

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…

The purpose of this article is to characterize symplectic and Hamiltonian circle actions on symplectic manifolds in terms of symplectic embeddings of Riemann surfaces. More precisely, we will show that (1) if $(M,\omega)$ admits a…

According to Thurston's stability theorem, every group of C^1 diffeomorphisms of the closed interval is locally indicable (.e., every finitely generated subgroup factors through Z). We show that, even for finitely generated groups, the…

The goal of this paper is to study ergodic and rigidity properties of smooth actions of the discrete Heisenberg group $\H$. We establish the decomposition of the tangent space of any $C^\infty$ compact Riemannian manifold $M$ for Lyapunov…

A hyperbolic group acts by homeomorphisms on its Gromov boundary. We show that if this boundary is a topological n-sphere the action is topologically stable in the dynamical sense: any nearby action is semi-conjugate to the standard…

We show that Thompson's group $F$ has a topological action on a compact metric space that is proximal and has no fixed points.

A diffeomorphism $f$ has a $C^1$-robust homoclinic tangency if there is a $C^1$-neighbourhood $\cU$ of $f$ such that every diffeomorphism in $g\in \cU$ has a hyperbolic set $\La_g$, depending continuously on $g$, such that the stable and…

Let $M$ be a $2n$-dimensional closed symplectic manifold admitting a Hamiltonian circle action with isolated fixed points. We show that if $M$ contains an $S^1$-invariant symplectic hypersurface $D$ such that $M\setminus D$ is a homology…

We study skew-amenable topological groups, i.e., those admitting a left-invariant mean on the space of bounded real-valued functions left-uniformly continuous in the sense of Bourbaki. We prove characterizations of skew-amenability for…

In 2002 Polterovich has notably established that on closed aspherical symplectic manifolds, Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of finite order, which we call Hamiltonian torsion, must in fact be trivial. In this paper we prove the first…

We consider group measure space II$_1$ factors $M=L^{\infty}(X)\rtimes\Gamma$ arising from Bernoulli actions of ICC property (T) groups $\Gamma$ (more generally, of groups $\Gamma$ containing an infinite normal subgroup with relative…

We prove that the group of diffeomorphisms of the interval $[0,1]$ contains surface groups whose action on $(0,1)$ has no global fix point, is topologically transitive, and such that only countably many points of the interval $(0,1)$ have…

For a discrete group $G$ and the compact space Sub$_G$ of (closed) subgroups of $G$ endowed with the Chabauty topology, we study the dynamics of actions of automorphisms of $G$ on Sub$_G$ in terms of distality and expansivity. We also study…

Let $G$ be a countable group with no finitely generated subgroup of exponential growth. We show that every action of $G$ on a countable set preserving a linear (respectively, circular) order can be realised as the restriction of some action…

We provide a smoothening criterion for group actions on manifolds by singular diffeomorphisms. We prove that if a countable group $\Gamma$ has the fixed point property FW for walls (e.g. if it has property (T)), every aperiodic action of…

We study groups of homeomorphisms of R, each of whose elements have at most one fixed point. In particular we prove that any such group of C^2 diffeomorphisms is topologically conjugate to an affine group.

We initiate the study of a measurable analogue of small topological full groups that we call $\mathrm L^1$ full groups. These groups are endowed with a Polish group topology which admits a natural complete right invariant metric. We mostly…

We show that no finite index subgroup of a sufficiently complicated mapping class group or braid group can act faithfully by $C^{1+\mathrm{bv}}$ diffeomorphisms on the circle, which generalizes a result of Farb-Franks, and which parallels a…

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…