On topological actions of finite groups on S^3

Abstract

We consider orientation-preserving actions of a finite group G on the 3-sphere S^3 (and also on Euclidean space R^3). By the geometrization of finite group actions on 3-manifolds, if such an action is smooth then it is conjugate to an orthogonal action, and in particular G is isomorphic to a subgroup of the orthogonal group SO(4) (or of SO(3) in the case of R^3). On the other hand, there are topological actions with wildly embedded fixed point sets; such actions are not conjugate to smooth actions but one would still expect that the corresponding groups G are isomorphic to subgroups of the orthgonal groups SO(4) (or of SO(3), resp.). In the present paper, we obtain some results in this direction; we prove that the only finite, nonabelian simple group with a topological action on S^3, or on any homology 3-sphere, is the alternating or dodecahedral group A_5 (the only finite, nonabelian simple subgroup of SO(4)), and that every finite group with a topological, orientation-preserving action on Euclidean space R^3 is in fact isomorphic to a subgroup of SO(3).