Homomorphisms between diffeomorphism groups

Abstract

AbstractFor $r\geq 3$, $p\geq 2$, we classify all actions of the groups ${ \mathrm{Diff} }_{c}^{r} ( \mathbb{R} )$ and ${ \mathrm{Diff} }_{+ }^{r} ({S}^{1} )$ by ${C}^{p} $-diffeomorphisms on the line and on the circle. This is the same as describing all non-trivial group homomorphisms between groups of compactly supported diffeomorphisms on 1-manifolds. We show that all such actions have an elementary form, which we call topologically diagonal. As an application, we answer a question of Ghys in the 1-manifold case: if $M$ is any closed manifold, and ${\mathrm{Diff} }^{\infty } \hspace{-2.0pt} \mathop{(M)}\nolimits_{0} $ injects into the diffeomorphism group of a 1-manifold, must $M$ be one-dimensional? We show that the answer is yes, even under more general conditions. Several lemmas on subgroups of diffeomorphism groups are of independent interest, including results on commuting subgroups and flows.