Fixed points of nilpotent actions on surfaces of negative Euler characteristic

Abstract

We prove that a locally nilpotent group $G$ of $C^{1}$ diffeomorphisms of a compact surface $S$ of non-vanishing Euler characteristic has a finite orbit ${\mathcal O}$ whose cardinal is bounded by above by a function of the characteristic of Euler of $S$. We focus on the case of negative Euler characteristic $\chi (S)$. Then we can choose ${\mathcal O}$ so that it consists of global contractible fixed points of thesubgroup $G_0$ of $G$ consisting of isotopic to the identity elements. In particular $G$ has a global contractible fixed point if it consists of isotopic to the identity elements.