Dynamics of certain distal actions on spheres (Q2316556)

The notion of distality was introduced by Hilbert and was studied in different contexts. In this paper, the authors consider the action of \(\mathrm{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{R})\) on \(\mathbb{S}^n\) arising as the quotient of the linear action on \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\backslash\{0\}\). They show that, for a semigroup \(\mathfrak{S}\) of \(\mathrm{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{R})\), the following properties are equivalent: (1) \(\mathfrak{S}\) acts distally on the unit sphere \(\mathbb{S}^n\), and (2) the closure of \(\mathfrak{S}\) is a compact group. They also show that in the case that \(\mathfrak{S}\) is a closed semigroup, the above conditions are equivalent to the condition that every cyclic subsemigroup of \(\mathfrak{S}\) acts distally on \(\mathbb{S}^n\). In the case of the unit circle \(\mathbb{S}^1\), the authors consider actions corresponding to maps in \(\mathrm{GL}(2,\mathbb{R})\). They study the conditions for the existence of fixed points and periodic points, which imply that these maps are not distal.