Abstract:
I will explain recent results on the Jordan property for homeomorphism
groups that generalize most of the presently known results about Jordan
diffeomorphism groups. A crucial ingredient in these results is a recent
theorem of Csikós, Pyber and Szabó. I will also talk about the following
application. Let X be a compact topological manifold, possibly with boundary,
with nonzero Euler characteristic. Then there exists a constant C such
that for any continuous action of any finite group G on X there is a point
in X whose stabilizer has index in G not bigger than C.