Homeomorphism Groups of Commutator Width One
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY Volume 141, Number 5, May 2013, Pages 1839–1847 S 0002-9939(2012)11595-3 Article electronically published on November 28, 2012 HOMEOMORPHISM GROUPS OF COMMUTATOR WIDTH ONE TAKASHI TSUBOI (Communicated by Alexander N. Dranishnikov) n Abstract. We show that any element of the identity component Homeo(S )0 of the group of homeomorphisms of the n-dimensional sphere Sn can be written as one commutator. We also show that any element of the group Homeo(μn) of homeomorphisms of the n-dimensional Menger compact space μn can be written as one commutator. 1. Introduction The algebraic properties of the group of homeomorphisms or diffeomorphisms are studied by many people. The identity components of the group of homeomorphisms or diffeomorphisms of compact manifolds are known to be perfect and moreover simple ([23], [1], [12], [10], [13], [16], [19], [11], [2]). Many of them, for example the group of homeomorphisms of the n-dimensional sphere, are known to be uniformly perfect ([1], [7], [20], [22]). A group is uniformly perfect if every element can be written as a product of a bounded number of commutators. The least number of such bounds is called the commutator width of the group. In this paper we show that the commutator width of the identity component n n Homeo(S )0 of the group of homeomorphisms of the n-dimensional sphere S is one. n Theorem 1.1. Any element of Homeo(S )0 can be written as one commutator. We also show that the commutator width of the group Homeo(μn)ofhomeo- morphisms of the n-dimensional Menger compact space μn is one. Theorem 1.2. Any element of Homeo(μn) can be written as one commutator. n Anderson showed that in the group Homeoc(R ) of homeomorphisms of the n- dimensional Euclidean space with compact support, any element can be written as n one commutator ([1], [15]). Since any element f of Homeo0(S ) can be written as a product f = gh such that g and h are the identity on some nonempty open sets, n the fact that the commutator width of Homeoc(R )isoneimpliesthatf can be written as a product of two commutators. Received by the editors September 12, 2011. 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 54H15, 54H20, 57S05; Secondary 20F65, 37B05, 57N50. Key words and phrases. Homeomorphism group, uniformly perfect, commutator subgroup. The author is partially supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) 20244003, (S) 24224002, Grant-in-Aid for Exploratory Research 21654009, 24654011, Japan Society for Pro- motion of Science, and by the Global COE Program at the Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Tokyo. c 2012 American Mathematical Society Reverts to public domain 28 years from publication 1839 License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see https://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use 1840 TAKASHI TSUBOI It is worth recalling the construction by Anderson ([1]). For given f ∈ n Homeoc(R ), we find a bounded ball U such that the support supp(f) ⊂ U.Then n n we can find an element g ∈ Homeoc(R ) such that g (U)(n ∈ Z) are disjoint and ∞ lim diam(gn(U)) = 0. Put F = gnfg−n.ThenwehavegFg−1 = f −1F .Thus n→∞ n=0 f = FgF−1g−1. We understand the meaning that the commutator width is one as follows. In the n case of Homeoc(R ), we see that for any element f,thereexistsg such that g and fg are conjugate. That is, g is dynamically so strong that fg and g have the same dynamics, and hence they are conjugate. n n InthecaseofHomeo0(S )orHomeo(μ ), we have the candidate which has the strong dynamics. The candidate is the topologically hyperbolic homeomorphism. A topologically hyperbolic homeomorphism is a homeomorphism h with one source n n s+ and one sink s− such that lim h (x)=s− and lim h (x)=s+ for x ∈ n→+∞ n→−∞ {s−,s+}. It seems true that the orientation-preserving topologically hyperbolic homeomorphisms are all conjugate, but we are not able to show it at the present. The topologically hyperbolic homeomorphisms we construct later are conjugate because they are constructed with nice fundamental domains outside the fixed points. Hence what we do in this paper for a given homeomorphism f is to construct a topologically hyperbolic homeomorphism g whichissostrongthatfg is topologi- cally hyperbolic. We will prove Theorem 1.1 in Section 2 and Theorem 1.2 in Section 3. Added in proof : Shigenori Matsumoto told the author that the fact that the com- 1 mutator width of Homeo(S )0 is one follows from a result in Transverse foliations of Seifert bundles and self-homeomorphism of the circle, Comment. Math. Helvetici 56 (1981) 638–660, by D. Eisenbud, U. Hirsch and W. Neumann. 2. The group of homeomorphisms of the n-dimensional sphere For the proof of Theorem 1.1, we need the following deep theorems. Theorem 2.1 (Generalized Schoenflies Theorem, [4], [5]). Let Σ be a locally flat (n − 1)-dimensional sphere in the n-dimensional sphere Sn. Then the closures of the complementary domains of Σ are homeomorphic to the n-dimensional disk Dn. Here, an (n − 1)-dimensional submanifold Ln−1 in an n-dimensional manifold M n is locally flat if each point of Ln−1 has a neighborhood U in M n such that the pair (U, U ∩ Ln−1)ishomeomorphicto(Rn, Rn−1). Theorem 2.2 (Annulus conjecture, [14], [17]). Let Σ0 and Σ1 be disjoint locally flat (n − 1)-dimensional spheres in the n-dimensional sphere Sn. Then the closure of the region between them is homeomorphic to Sn−1 × [0, 1]. Let f be an orientation-preserving homeomorphism of the n-dimensional sphere Sn which is not the identity. Then we can find small n-dimensional closed disks n n n n n −1 n D0 and D1 in S such that ∂D0 , ∂D1 are locally flat and the four disks f (D0 ), n n n D0 , D1 , f(D1 )aredisjoint. n n\ n n n\ n By Theorem 2.1, D0 and S int(D1 ) are homeomorphic and D1 and S int(D0 ) are homeomorphic. Hence there exists an orientation-preserving homeomorphism n n n \ n n \ n n g of S such that g(D0 )=S int(D1 )andg(S int(D0 )) = D1 . License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see https://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use HOMEOMORPHISM GROUPS OF COMMUTATOR WIDTH ONE 1841 (gfg)(Σ) (fgf−1)(Σ) (g2)(Σ) (fg2)(Σ) f n −−→ n D1 f(D1 ) (gf−1)(Σ) (fgfg)(Σ) g(Σ) g (fg)(Σ) f −1(Σ) Σ (f −1g−1f −1)(Σ) (g−1f)(Σ) f −1 n −−→ n f (D0 ) D0 (f −1g−1)(Σ)(g−1)(Σ) (f −1g−1f)(Σ)(g−1f −1)(Σ) Figure 1. The actions of g and fg n − −1 Let Σ = ∂D0 . Thenwehavefourdisjoint(n 1)-dimensional spheres: f (Σ), −1 n n n n Σ, g(Σ), (fg)(Σ), which are the boundaries of f (D0 ),D0 ,D1 ,f(D1 ), respectively. Then we see that (gf−1)(Σ), (g2)(Σ), (gfg)(Σ)arecontained n −1 2 n −1 −1 in D1 ;(fgf )(Σ), (fg )(Σ), (fgfg)(Σ)arecontainedinf(D1 ); (g f )(Σ), −1 −1 n −1 −1 −1 −1 −1 (g )(Σ), (g fg)(Σ)arecontainedinD0 ;and(f g f )(Σ), (f g )(Σ), −1 −1 −1 n −1 n (f g f)(Σ)arecontainedinf (D0 ). See Figure 1, where f (D0 )islower n n n left, D0 is lower right, D1 is upper left and f(D1 ) is upper right, and where f −1 n n n n translates f (D0 )andD1 to D0 and f(D1 ), respectively. We require the homeomorphism g to satisfy the following conditions: (1) lim diam(gk(Σ)) = 0, k→±∞ (2) lim diam((fg)k(Σ)) = 0. k→±∞ n n n Let D denote the n-dimensional standard disk. Let ψ n : D −→ D and ψ n : D0 0 D1 n −→ n D D1 be homeomorphisms. Then by Theorem 2.1, we have homeomorphisms n n n n n ψ n\ n : D −→ S \ int(D ) extending ψ n |∂D and ψ n\ n : D −→ S int(D0 ) 0 D0 S int(D1 ) n \ n | n S int(D1 ) extending ψDn ∂D . We first define a homeomorphism g by 1 −1 n ψ n\ n ψ n on D , S int(D1 ) D0 0 g = −1 n n ψ n ψ n\ n on S \ int(D ) , D1 S int(D0 ) 0 License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see https://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use 1842 TAKASHI TSUBOI andthenwemodifyg so that (1) and (2) are satisfied. For this purpose we notice the following fact. Lemma 2.3. For any compact set K in the interior int(Dn) of the standard disk k n n D and any positive real number ε, there is a homeomorphism ϕK,ε : D −→ D n which is the identity on ∂D such that diam(ϕK,ε(K)) ≤ ε. For a continuous map ψ between compact metric spaces ψ : X −→ Y ,let μψ denote the modulus of continuity of ψ. This means that distY (ψ(x),ψ(y)) ≤ μψ(distX (x, y)) for x, y ∈ X. The modification of g is done step by step. 2 −1 2 First we look at g (Σ)andtakeK1 = ψDn ((g )(Σ)) and ε1 such that μψ n (ε1) 1 D1 ≤ −2 2 2 ,whereμψ n is the modulus of continuity of ψDn .Thenwelookat(fg) (Σ) D1 1 −1 −2 and take K2 = ψDn ((gfg)(Σ)).