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Chapter 4 - Locally Commutative Actions: Minimizing the Number of Pieces in a Paradoxical Decomposition

from Part I - Paradoxical Decompositions, or the Nonexistence of Finitely Additive Measures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

Stan Wagon
Affiliation:
Macalester College, Minnesota
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Summary

If one analyzed carefully the proof presented in Chapter 3 that a sphere may be duplicated using rotations, one would find that that proof used ten pieces. More precisely, S2 = AB where AB = ∅ and A4S2 and B6S2. (By 3.6, 2.6, and 1.10, S2\D splits into A′ and B′ with A′ ∼2S2\D3B′; 3.9 shows that S22S2\D, whence A′ and B′ yield A, BS2 with the properties claimed.) It is easy to see that at least four pieces are necessary whenever a set X, acted upon by a group G, is G-paradoxical. For if X contains disjoint A, B with AmXnB and m + n < 4, then one of m or n equals 1. If, say, m = 1, then X = g(A) for some gG whence A = g-1(X) = X and B = ∅, a contradiction. It turns out that an interesting feature of the rotation group's action on the sphere allows the minimal number of pieces to be realized: there are disjoint sets A, BS2 such that A2S22B. Moreover, the techniques used to cut the number of pieces to a minimum lead to significant new ideas on how to deal with the fixed points of an action of a free group, adding to our ability to recognize when a group's action is paradoxical.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1985

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