Using ergodic theory to study the cohomology of diffeomorphism groups
Recent work with Nariman and with Fournier-Facio-Nariman determines the bounded cohomology of some familiar diffeomorphism groups. The results differ from what is known or expected in ordinary cohomology. Another way to phrase this is that certain classical characteristic classes are unbounded. The goal of this lecture is to show how some ideas from ergodic theory are useful to prove such cohomological results.