The bounded cohomology of transformation groups of Euclidean spaces and discs

Abstract

We prove that the groups of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms and diffeomorphisms of $\mathbb{R}^n$ are boundedly acyclic, in all regularities. This is the first full computation of the bounded cohomology of a transformation group that is not compactly supported, and it implies that many characteristic classes of flat $\mathbb{R}^n$- and $S^n$-bundles are unbounded. We obtain the same result for the group of homeomorphisms of the disc that restrict to the identity on the boundary, and for the homeomorphism group of the non-compact Cantor set. In the appendix, Alexander Kupers proves a controlled version of the annulus theorem which we use to study the bounded cohomology of the homeomorphism group of the discs.