Topology Seminar: Dale Rolfsen

Let M be a connected, orientable, piecewise linear manifold of dimension n and let B be a closed submanifold of M. Let PL(M, B) be the group of orientation preserving PL homeomorphisms of M which are pointwise fixed on B. The group operation is composition of functions.

In joint work with Danny Calegari we show that if B has codimension zero or one, the group PL(M,B) is locally indicable. This means that every finitely-generated subgroup has the integers as a quotient. It follows that PL(M,B) is left-orderable and therefore has no elements of finite order.