Related papers: Direct products, overlapping actions, and critical…
We show that if $G_1$ and $G_2$ are non-solvable groups, then no $C^{1,\tau}$ action of $(G_1\times G_2)*\mathbb{Z}$ on $S^1$ is faithful for $\tau>0$. As a corollary, if $S$ is an orientable surface of complexity at least three then the…
We study actions of groups by homeomorphisms on $\mathbf{R}$ (or an interval) that are minimal, have solvable germs at $\pm \infty$ and contain a pair of elements of a certain type. We call such actions coherent. We establish that such an…
Let $M$ be a compact one--manifold, and let $\mathrm{Diff}^{1+\mathrm{bv}}(M)$ denote the group of $C^1$ orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of $M$ whose first derivatives have bounded variation. We prove that if $G$ is a group which is…
If $G$ is a finitely generated group and $X$ a $G$-set, the growth of the action of $G$ on $X$ is the function that measures the largest cardinality of a ball of radius $n$ in the Schreier graph $\Gamma(G,X)$. In this note we consider the…
We consider Abelian-by-cyclic groups for which the cyclic factor acts by hyperbolic automorphisms on the Abelian subgroup. We show that if such a group acts faithfully by $C^1$ diffeomorphisms of the closed interval with no global fixed…
Given a finitely generated, torsion-free nilpotent group, we find the maximum possible (critical) regularity for its faithful actions by diffeomorphisms of the closed or half-open interval and of the circle. Our result gives an expression…
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…
Let $G$ be a finitely generated group acting faithfully and properly discontinuously by homeomorphisms on a planar surface $X \subseteq \mathbb{S}^2$. We prove that $G$ admits such an action that is in addition co-compact, provided we can…
We present a systematic study of the structure of crossed products and fixed point algebras by compact group actions with the Rokhlin property on not necessarily unital C*-algebras. Our main technical result is the existence of an…
Let $G$ be a torsion-free, finitely-generated, nilpotent and metabelian group. In this work we show that $G$ embeds into the group of orientation preserving $C^{1+\alpha}$-diffeomorphisms of the compact interval, for all $\alpha< 1/k$ where…
A group action on a metric space is called growth tight if the exponential growth rate of the group with respect to the induced pseudo-metric is strictly greater than that of its quotients. A prototypical example is the action of a free…
It is well-known that no non-Kac compact quantum group can faithfully act on $C(X)$ for a classical, compact Hausdorff space $X$. However, in this article we show that this is no longer true if we go to non-compact spaces and non-compact…
According to the classical Plante-Thurston Theorem, all nilpotent groups of $C^2$-diffeomorphisms of the closed interval are Abelian. Using techniques coming from the works of Denjoy and Pixton, Farb and Franks constructed a faithful action…
We introduce the concept of crossed product of a product system by a locally compact group. We prove that the crossed product of a row-finite and faithful product system by an amenable group is also a row-finite and faithful product system.…
In this monograph, we give an account of the relationship between the algebraic structure of finitely generated and countable groups and the regularity with which they act on manifolds. We concentrate on the case of one--dimensional…
We consider group actions of topological groups on C*-algebras of the types which occur in many physics models. These are singular actions in the sense that they need not be strongly continuous, or the group need not be locally compact. We…
We prove that the topological full group $[[X]]$ of a two-sided full shift $X = \Sigma^{\mathbb{Z}}$ contains every right-angled Artin group (also called a graph group). More generally, we show that the family of subgroups with "linear…
If $G$ acts on a $C^*$-correspondence ${\mathcal H}$, then by the universal property $G$ acts on the Cuntz-Pimsner algebra ${\mathcal O}_{\mathcal H}$ and we study the crossed product ${\mathcal O}_{\mathcal H}\rtimes G$ and the fixed point…
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 survey the role of right-angled Artin groups in the theory of diffeomorphism groups of low dimensional manifolds. We first describe some of the subgroup structure of right-angled Artin groups. We then discuss the interplay between…