Automorphisms of generalized Thompson groups

Abstract

We look at the automorphisms of Thompson type groups of piecewise linear homeomorphisms of the real line or circle that use slopes that are integral powers of a fixed integer n with n>2. We show that large numbers of "exotic" automorphisms appear---automorphisms that are represented as conjugation by non-PL homeomorphisms of the real line or circle. This is in contrast to the n=2 case where no such automorphisms appear.