Direct products, overlapping actions, and critical regularity

Abstract

We address the problem of computing the critical regularity of groups of homeomorphisms of the interval. Our main result is that if $H$ and $K$ are two non-solvable groups then a $C^1$ actions of $H\times K$ on a compact interval $I$ cannot be {\em overlapping}, which by definition means that there must be non-trivial $h\in H$ and $k\in K$ with disjoint support. As a corollary we prove that the right-angled Artin group $(F_2\times F_2)*\mathbb{Z}$ has critical regularity one, which is to say that it admits a faithful $C^1$ action on $I$, but no faithful $C^{1,\tau}$ action for $\tau>0$. This is the first explicit example of a group of exponential growth whose critical regularity is finite, known exactly, and achieved. Another corollary we get is that Thompson's group $F$ does not admit a $C^1$ overlapping action on $I$, so that $F*\mathbb{Z}$ is a new example of a locally indicable group admitting no faithful $C^1$--action on $I$.