Groups of PL homeomorphisms of cubes

Abstract

We study algebraic properties of groups of PL or smooth homeomorphisms of unit cubes in any dimension, fixed pointwise on the boundary, and more generally PL or smooth groups acting on manifolds and fixing pointwise a submanifold of codimension 1 (resp. codimension 2), and show that such groups are locally indicable (resp. circularly orderable). We also give many examples of interesting groups that can act, and discuss some other algebraic constraints that such groups must satisfy, including the fact that a group of PL homeomorphisms of the n-cube (fixed pointwise on the boundary) contains no elements that are more than exponentially distorted.