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Publications and source records attributed to Sam Nariman.
This document compiles problems proposed and discussed during the problem session at the conference Foliations and Diffeomorphism Groups (CIRM, 2024), organized by H\'el\`ene Eynard-Bontemps, Ga\"el Meigniez, Sam Nariman, and Mehdi Yazdi. The problems were contributed by participants and have been lightly edited by the organizers for clarity and coherence.
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.
This is a survey article on the relationship between algebraic properties of diffeomorphism groups and homotopical properties of foliations, written for the Notices of the AMS.
Morita showed that for each power of the Euler class, there are examples of flat $\mathbb{S}^1$-bundles for which the power of the Euler class does not vanish. Haefliger asked if the same holds for flat odd-dimensional sphere bundles. In this paper, for a manifold $M$ with a free torus action, we prove that certain $M$-bundles are cobordant to a flat $M$-bundle and as a consequence, we answer Haefliger's question. We show that the powers of the Euler class and Pontryagin classes $p_i$ for $i\leq n-1$ are all non-trivial in $H^*(\text{BDiff}^{\delta}_+(\mathbb{S}^{2n-1});\mathbb{Q})$. In the appendix, Nils Prigge corrects a claim by Haefliger about the vanishing of certain classes in the smooth group cohomology of $\text{Diff}_+(\mathbb{S}^3)$.
In his work on the generalization of the Reeb stability theorem, Thurston conjectured that if the fundamental group of a compact leaf $L$ in a codimension-one transversely orientable foliation is amenable and if the first cohomology group $H^1(L;\mathbb{R})$ is trivial, then $L$ has a neighborhood foliated as a product. This was later proved as a consequence of Witte-Morris' theorem on the local indicability of amenable left orderable groups and Navas' theorem on the left orderability of the group of germs of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the real line at the origin. In this note, we prove that Thurston's conjecture also holds for any foliation that is sufficiently close to the original foliation. Hence, if the fundamental group $\pi_1(L)$ is amenable and $H^1(L;\mathbb{R})=0$, then for every transversely orientable codimension-one foliation $\mathcal{F}$ having $L$ as a leaf, there is a neighborhood of $\mathcal{F}$ in the space of $C^{1,0}$ foliations with Epstein $C^0$ topology consisting entirely of foliations that are locally a product $L \times \mathbb{R}$.
Haefliger-Thurston's conjecture predicts that Haefliger's classifying space for $C^r$-foliations of codimension $n$ whose normal bundles are trivial is $2n$-connected. In this paper, we confirm this conjecture for PL foliations of codimension $2$. As a consequence, we use a version of Mather-Thurston's theorem for PL homeomorphisms due to the author to derive new homological properties for PL surface homeomorphisms. In particular, we answer a question of Epstein in dimension $2$ and prove the simplicity of the identity component of PL surface homeomorphisms.
Answering a question of Hatcher-Vogtmann, we prove that the top homology group of the free factor complex is not the dualizing module for $\text{Aut}(F_n)$, at least for $n = 5$.
We investigate a conjecture due to Haefliger and Thurston in the context of foliated manifold bundles. In this context, Haefliger-Thurston's conjecture predicts that every $M$-bundle over a manifold $B$ where $\text{dim}(B)\leq \text{dim}(M)$ is cobordant to a flat $M$-bundle. In particular, we study the bordism class of flat $M$-bundles over low dimensional manifolds, comparing a finite dimensional Lie group $G$ with $\text{Diff}_0(G)$ and localizing the holonomy of flat M-bundles to be supported in a ball.
We determine the bounded cohomology of the group of homeomorphisms of certain low-dimensional manifolds. In particular, for the group of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the circle and of the closed 2-disc, it is isomorphic to the polynomial ring generated by the bounded Euler class. These seem to be the first examples of groups for which the entire bounded cohomology can be described without being trivial. We further prove that, contrary to ordinary cohomology, the diffeomorphisms groups of the circle and of the closed 2-disc have the same bounded cohomology as their homeomorphism groups and that both differ from the ordinary cohomology. Finally, we determine the low-dimensional bounded cohomology of homeo- and diffeomorphism of the spheres $S^n$ and of certain 3-manifolds. In particular, we answer a question of Ghys by showing that the Euler class in $H^4(Homeo_\circ(S^3))$ is unbounded.
Kontsevich conjectured that $\text{BDiff}(M, \text{rel }\partial)$ has the homotopy type of a finite CW complex for all compact $3$-manifolds with non-empty boundary. Hatcher-McCullough proved this conjecture when $M$ is irreducible. We prove a homological version of Kontsevich's conjecture. More precisely, we show that $\text{BDiff}(M, \text{rel }\partial)$ has finitely many nonzero homology groups, each finitely generated, when $M$ is a connected sum of irreducible $3$-manifolds that each have a nontrivial and non-spherical boundary.
In this paper, we generalize the original idea of Thurston for the so called Mather-Thurston's theorem for foliated bundles to prove new variants of this theorem for PL homeomorphisms, contactormorphisms. These versions answer questions posed by Gelfand -Fuks and Greenberg on PL foliations and Rybicki on contactomorphisms. The interesting point about the original Thurston's technique compared to the better known Segal-McDuff's proof of the Mather-Thurston theorem is that it gives a compactly supported c-principle theorem without knowing the relevant local statement on open balls. In the appendix, we show that Thurston's fragmentation implies the non-abelian Poincare duality theorem and its generalization using blob complexes.
In this short note, we study the bordism problem for group actions on the torus and give examples of groups acting on the torus by diffeomorphisms isotopic to the identity that cannot be extended to an action on a bounding 3-manifold. This solves a question raised in the previous work of the authors.
We investigate the topology of the space of M\"obius conjugacy classes of degree $d$ rational maps on the Riemann sphere. We show that it is rationally acyclic and we compute its fundamental group. As a byproduct, we also obtain the ranks of some higher homotopy groups of the parameter space of degree $d$ rational maps allowing us to extend the previously known range. Moreover, we show that this parameter space is not nilpotent.
We study cohomological obstructions to extending group actions on the boundary $\partial M$ of a $3$-manifold to a $C^0$-action on $M$ when $\partial M$ is diffeomorphic to a torus or a sphere. In particular, we show that for a $3$-manifold $M$ with torus boundary which is not diffeomorphic to a solid torus, the torus action on the boundary does not extend to a $C^0$-action on $M$.
For an oriented manifold $M$ whose dimension is less than $4$, we use the contractibility of certain complexes associated to its submanifolds to cut $M$ into simpler pieces in order to do local to global arguments. In particular, in these dimensions, we give a different proof of a deep theorem of Thurston in foliation theory which says that the natural map between classifying spaces $\mathrm{B}\text{Homeo}^{\delta}(M)\to \mathrm{B}\text{Homeo}(M)$ induces a homology isomorphism where $\text{Homeo}^{\delta}(M)$ denotes the group of homeomorphisms of $M$ made discrete. Our proof shows that in low dimensions, Thurston's theorem can be proved without using foliation theory. Finally, we show that this technique gives a new perspective on the homotopy type of homeomorphism groups in low dimensions. In particular, we give a different proof of Hacher's theorem that the homeomorphism groups of Haken $3$-manifolds with boundary are homotopically discrete without using his disjunction techniques.
In this paper, we prove homological stability of symplectomorphisms and extended hamiltonians of surfaces made discrete. We construct an isomorphism from the stable homology group of symplectomorphisms and extended Hamiltonians of surfaces to the homology of certain infinite loop spaces. We use these infinite loop spaces to study characteristic classes of surface bundles whose holonomy groups are area preserving, in particular we give a homotopy theoretic proof of the Kotschick-Morita theorem.
Apparently a lost theorem of Thurston states that the cube of the Euler class $e^3\in H^6(BDiff^{\delta}_{\omega}(S^1);\mathbb{Q})$ is zero where $Diff^{\delta}_{\omega}(S^1)$ is the analytic orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of the circle with the discrete topology. This is in contrast with Morita's theorem that the powers of the Euler class are nonzero in $H^*(BDiff^{\delta}(S^1);\mathbb{Q})$ where $Diff^{\delta}(S^1)$ is the orientation preserving $C^{\infty}$- diffeomorphisms of the circle with the discrete topology. The purpose of this short note is to prove that the powers of the Euler class $e^k \in H^*(BDiff^{\delta}_{\omega}(S^1);\mathbb{Z})$ in fact are nonzero in cohomology with integer coefficients. We also give a short proof of Morita's theorem.
We show that the group cohomology of the diffeomorphisms of the disk with $n$ punctures has the cohomology of the braid group of $n$ strands as the summand. As an application of this method, we also prove that there is no cohomological obstruction to lifting the "standard" embedding $\mathrm{Br}_{2g+2}\hookrightarrow \mathrm{Mod}_{g,2}$ to a group homomorphism between diffeomorphism groups.