The universal minimal space for groups of homeomorphisms of h-homogeneous spaces

Abstract: Let X be a h-homogeneous zero-dimensional compact Hausdorff space, i.e. X is a Stone dual of a homogeneous Boolean algebra. It is shown that the universal minimal space M(G) of the topological group G=Homeo(X), is the space of maximal chains on X introduced by Uspenskij. If X is metrizable then clearly X is homeomorphic to the Cantor set and the result was already known (Glasner-Weiss 2003). However many new examples arise for non-metrizable spaces. These include, among others, the generalized Cantor sets X={0,1}^{kappa} for non-countable cardinals kappa, and the corona or remainder of omega, X=beta(omega) \ omega, where beta(omega) denotes the Stone-Cech compactification of the natural numbers.