Groups of piecewise isometric permutations of lattice points

Abstract

Let M denote either Euclidean or hyperbolic n-space, and let G be a discrete group of isometries of M, with the property that G respects and acts tile-transitively on a convex-polyhedral tesselation of M. Given an arbitrary base point p in M, we consider the orbit Gp in M and define a notion of "G-polyhedral pieces" S in Gp. The objects of our interest are the groups pi(S) of all piecewise G-isometric permutations on S. In this paper we merely present the two most basic examples, and these play rather different roles: The case when G = PSL(2,Z) acting on the hyperbolic plane reveals that the "piecewise hyperbolic" groups phi(Gp) here have prominent relatives: they are closely related to Richard Thompson's group V. And in the Euclidean case when G = Isom(Z^n) we find that the "piecewise Euclidean" groups pei(S) - as well as the corresponding "piecewise translation" groups pet(S) - have divers but to some extent accessible finiteness properties.