Ordered groups as a tensor category

It is a classical theorem that the free product of ordered groups is orderable. In this note we show that, using a method of G. Bergman, an ordering of the free product can be constructed in a functorial manner, in the category of ordered groups and order-preserving homomorphisms. With this functor interpreted as a tensor product this category becomes a tensor (or monoidal) category. Moreover, if $O(G)$ denotes the space of orderings of the group $G$ with the natural topology, then for fixed groups $F$ and $G$ our construction can be considered a function $O(F) \times O(G) \to O(F * G)$. We show that this function is continuous and injective. Similar results hold for left-ordered groups.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur

Groups of PL homeomorphisms of cubes

We study algebraic properties of groups of PL or smooth homeomorphisms of unit cubes in any dimension, fixed pointwise on the boundary, and more generally PL or smooth groups acting on manifolds and fixing pointwise a submanifold of codimension 1 (resp. codimension 2), and show that such groups are locally indicable (resp. circularly orderable). We also give many examples of interesting groups that can act, and discuss some other algebraic constraints that such groups must satisfy, including the fact that a group of PL homeomorphisms of the n-cube (fixed pointwise on the boundary) contains no elements that are more than exponentially distorted.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure