Related papers: Laminar groups and 3-manifolds
A tubular group is a group that acts on a tree with $\mathbb{Z}^2$ vertex stabilizers and $\mathbb{Z}$ edge stabilizers. This paper develops further a criterion of Wise and determines when a tubular group acts freely on a finite dimensional…
We study isometric actions of Steinberg groups on Hadamard manifolds. We prove some rigidity properties related to these actions. In Particular we show that every isometric action of $St_n(F_p\langle t_1,\ldots ,t_k \rangle)$ on Hadamard…
We determine which three-manifolds are dominated by products. The result is that a closed, oriented, connected three-manifold is dominated by a product if and only if it is finitely covered either by a product or by a connected sum of…
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…
Bill Thurston proved that taut foliations of hyperbolic 3-manifolds have Euler classes of norm at most one, and conjectured that any integral second cohomology class of norm equal to one is realised as the Euler class of some taut…
We classify contact toric 3-manifolds up to contactomorphism, through explicit descriptions, building off of work by Lerman [Lerman03]. As an application, we classify all contact structures on 3-manifolds that can be realised as a concave…
This paper is devoted to a systematic study of the geometry of nondegenerate $\bbR^n$-actions on $n$-manifolds. The motivations for this study come from both dynamics, where these actions form a special class of integrable dynamical systems…
Let $J$ be a semisimple Lie group with all simple factors of real rank at least two. Let $\Gamma<J$ be a lattice. We prove a very general local rigidity result about actions of $J$ or $\Gamma$. This shows that almost all so-called "standard…
We show that the canonical contact structure on the link of a normal complex singularity is universally tight. As a corollary we show the existence of closed, oriented, atoroidal 3-manifolds with infinite fundamental groups which carry…
Suppose $M$ is a closed, connected, orientable, \irr\ \3m\ such that $G=\pi_1(M)$ is infinite. One consequence of Thurston's geometrization conjecture is that the universal covering space $\widetilde{M}$ of $M$ must be \homeo\ to $\RRR$.…
This paper introduces a quaternionic analogue of toric geometry by developing the theory of local $Q^n := Sp(1)^n$-actions on 4n-dimensional manifolds, modeled on the regular representation. We identify obstructions that measure the failure…
Braman [B08] described a construction where third-order tensors are exactly the set of linear transformations acting on the set of matrices with vectors as scalars. This extends the familiar notion that matrices form the set of all linear…
We are interested in finite groups acting orientation-preservingly on 3-manifolds (arbitrary actions, ie not necessarily free actions). In particular we consider finite groups which contain an involution with nonempty connected fixed point…
We show that fundamental groups of compact, orientable, irreducible 3-manifolds with toroidal boundary are Grothendieck rigid.
A multiplicatively closed, horizontal foliation on a Lie groupoid may be viewed as a "pseudoaction" on the base manifold $M$. A pseudoaction generates a pseudogroup of transformations of $M$ in the same way an ordinary Lie group action…
In the first part of this paper, we let $G$ be a finitely-generated amenable group such that $G/[G, G]$ is torsion-free. We suppose that $G$ acts by homeomorphisms homotopic to the identity on a manifold $M$, and give conditions on $M$…
A group action is said to be highly-transitive if it is $k$-transitive for every $k \ge 1$. The main result of this thesis is the following: Main Theorem: The fundamental group of a closed, orientable surface of genus > 1 admits a…
The tetrablock is a domain in 3-dimensional complex space that meets 3-dimensional Euclidean space in a regular tetrahedron. It is shown to be inhomogeneous and its automorphism group is determined. A type of Schwarz lemma for the…
We study topological properties of semi-group actions on the circle by orientation-preserving homeomorhisms. We prove that a generic action either possesses a forward-invariant interval-domain (i.e. a finite union of disjoint circle arcs),…
We discuss how the global geometry and topology of manifolds depend on different group actions of their fundamental groups, and in particular, how properties of a non-trivial compact 4-dimensional cobordism $M$ whose interior has a complete…