Simplifying group actions (Q675080): Difference between revisions

For a compact Lie group \(G\), the author of the paper under review applies the equivariant blow-up construction to simplify the orbit structure of a smooth \(G\)-manifold \(M\). He shows that if the principal isotropy subgroup of the action is the identity, then a finite number of equivariant blow-ups produce from \(M\) a smooth \(G\)-manifold \(M'\) such that only finite 2-groups occur as the isotropy subgroups in \(M'\) (in general, the isotropy subgroups are extensions of conjugates of the principal isotropy subgroup by 2-groups). Moreover, if \(G\) is abelian, then the action of \(G\) on \(M\) can be simplified so that all isotropy subgroups in \(M'\) are \(\mathbb{Z}_2\)-vector spaces and the codimension of the fixed point set of an isotropy subgroup \(G_x\) is the \(\mathbb{Z}_2\)-vector space dimension of \(G_x\). The author refers to such actions as to nonsingular actions, and he gives an example showing that for arbitrary compact Lie groups \(G\), smooth actions of \(G\) cannot always be modified to nonsingular actions. The author also shows that for a nonsingular action of \(G\) on \(M\), the quotient space \(M/G\) is a manifold (with corners) and if in addition \(G\) is abelian, the tangent bundle \(\tau_M\) of \(M\) is a direct sum of \(\tau_{M/G}\) and line bundles which are the extensions (to the whole of \(M\)) of the normal bundles of the various fixed point sets.