The polycyclic inverse monoids and the Thompson groups revisited

Abstract

We revisit our construction of the Thompson groups from the polycyclic inverse monoids in the light of new research. Specifically, we prove that the Thompson group $G_{n,1}$ is the group of units of a Boolean inverse monoid $C_{n}$ called the Cuntz inverse monoid. This inverse monoid is proved to be the tight completion of the polycyclic inverse monoid $P_{n}$. The étale topological groupoid associated with $C_{n}$ under non-commutative Stone duality is the usual groupoid associated with the corresponding Cuntz $C^{\ast}$-algebra. We then show that the group $G_{n,1}$ is also the group of automorphisms of a specific $n$-ary Cantor algebra: this $n$-ary Cantor algebra is constructed first as the monoid of total maps of a restriction semigroup à la Statman and then in terms of labelled trees à la Higman.