EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Amenable groups that act on the line
Speaker: Professor Dave Morris
Speaker Info: University of Lethbridge
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

Let G be a group. It is obvious that if G has an infinite cyclic quotient, then G has a nontrivial action on the real line by orientation-preserving homeomorphisms. The converse is not true in general, but, using an idea of E.Ghys, we prove that the converse does hold for all finitely generated, amenable groups. The proof is surprisingly easy, and combines elementary results from group theory, topology, and the theory of dynamical systems.