A commutator lemma for confined subgroups and applications to groups acting on rooted trees

A subgroup $H$ of a group $G$ is confined if the $G$-orbit of $H$ under conjugation is bounded away from the trivial subgroup in the space $\operatorname{Sub}(G)$ of subgroups of $G$. We prove a commutator lemma for confined subgroups. For groups of homeomorphisms, this provides the exact analogue for confined subgroups (hence in particular for URSs) of the classical commutator lemma for normal subgroups: if $G$ is a group of homeomorphisms of a Hausdorff space $X$ and $H$ is a confined subgroup of $G$, then $H$ contains the derived subgroup of the rigid stabilizer of some open subset of $X$. We apply this commutator lemma to the study of URSs and actions on compact spaces of groups acting on rooted trees. We prove a theorem describing the structure of URSs of weakly branch groups and of their non-topologically free minimal actions. Among the applications of these results, we show: 1) if $G$ is a finitely generated branch group, the $G$-action on $\partial T$ has the smallest possible orbital growth among all faithful $G$-actions; 2) if $G$ is a finitely generated branch group, then every embedding from $G$ into a group of homeomorphisms of strongly bounded type (e.g. a bounded automaton group) must be spatially realized; 3) if $G$ is a finitely generated weakly branch group, then $G$ does not embed into the group IET of interval exchange transformations.Comment: 48 pages. v1->v2: minor revisio

Triple transitivity and non-free actions in dimension one

We show that if $G$ is either: (1) a group of homeomorphisms of the circle such that the action of $G$ on $S^1$ is minimal, proximal, non-topologically free and satisfies some mild assumption; (2) a group of automorphisms of a tree $T$ such that the action of $G$ on the boundary $\partial T$ is minimal and non-topologically free; then the following holds: every 3-transitive faithful action of $G$ on a set is conjugate to the action on an orbit in $S^1$ or $\partial T$. As a corollary, we obtain sharp upper bounds for the transitivity degree of these groups. These results produce new classes of infinite groups whose transitivity degree is known. In the Appendix we show that if a group satisfies a non-trivial mixed identity, then either it contains a normal subgroup isomorphic to a finitary alternating group, or it has finite transitivity degree.Comment: 26 pages. v1-> v2: addition of an appendix and some minor correction

Extensive amenability and an application to interval exchanges

Extensive amenability is a property of group actions which has recently been used as a tool to prove amenability of groups. We study this property and prove that it is preserved under a very general construction of semidirect products. As an application, we establish the amenability of all subgroups of the group IET of interval exchange transformations that have angular components of rational rank~${\leq 2}$. In addition, we obtain a reformulation of extensive amenability in terms of inverted orbits and use it to present a purely probabilistic proof that recurrent actions are extensively amenable. Finally, we study the triviality of the Poisson boundary for random walks on IET and show that there are subgroups $G <IET$ admitting no finitely supported measure with trivial boundary.Comment: 28 page

Liouville property for groups and conformal dimension

Conformal dimension is a fundamental invariant of metric spaces, particularly suited to the study of self-similar spaces, such as spaces with an expanding self-covering (e.g. Julia sets of complex rational functions). The dynamics of these systems are encoded by the associated iterated monodromy groups, which are examples of contracting self-similar groups. Their amenability is a well-known open question. We show that if $G$ is an iterated monodromy group, and if the (Alfhors-regular) conformal dimension of the underlying space is strictly less than 2, then every symmetric random walk with finite second moment on $G$ has the Liouville property. As a corollary, every such group is amenable. This criterion applies to all examples of contracting groups previously known to be amenable, and to many new ones. In particular, it implies that for every post-critically finite complex rational function $f$ whose Julia set is not the whole sphere, the iterated monodromy group of $f$ is amenable.Comment: 36 pages, 5 figures, v2: minor change