Hyperbolic actions of Thompson's group F and generalizations

We study the poset of hyperbolic structures on Thompson's group F and its generalizations Fₙ for n 2. The global structure of this poset is as simple as one would expect, with the maximal non-elementary elements being two quasi-parabolic actions corresponding to well-known ascending HNN-extension expressions of Fₙ. However, the local structure turns out to be incredibly rich, in stark contrast with the situation for the T and V counterparts. We show that the subposet of quasi-parabolic hyperbolic structures consists of two isomorphic posets, each of which contains uncountably many subposets of lamplike structures, which can be described combinatorially in terms of certain hyperbolic structures on related lamplighter groups. Moreover, each of these subposets, as well as intersections and complements thereof, is very large, in that it contains a copy of the power set of the natural numbers. We also prove that these uncountably many uncountable subposets are not the entire picture, indeed there exists a copy of the power set of the natural numbers consisting entirely of non-lamplike structures. We also prove that this entire vast array of hyperbolic structures on Fₙ collapses as soon as one takes a natural semidirect product with Z/2Z. These results are all proved via a detailed analysis of confining subsets, and along the way we establish a number of fundamental results in the theory of confining subsets of groups.