Finiteness properties of stabilisers of oligomorphic actions

Abstract

An action of a group on a set is oligomorphic if it has finitely many orbits of $n$-element subsets for all $n$. We prove that for a large class of groups (including all groups of finite virtual cohomological dimension and all countable linear groups), for any oligomorphic action of such a group on an infinite set there exists a finite subset whose stabiliser is not of type $\mathrm{FP}_\infty$. This leads to obstructions on finiteness properties for permutational wreath products and twisted Brin-Thompson groups. We also prove a version for actions on flag complexes, and discuss connections to the Boone-Higman conjecture. In the appendix, we improve on the criterion of Bartholdi-Cornulier-Kochloukova for finiteness properties of wreath products, and the criterion of Kropholler-Martino for finiteness properties of graph-wreath products.