Anosov representations: domains of discontinuity and applications. (Q1930891)

Anosov representations have been introduced by \textit{F. Labourie} [Invent. Math. 165, No. 1, 51-114 (2006; Zbl 1103.32007)] in his study of the Hitchin component of \(\mathrm{SL}(n,\mathbb R)\) and have been studied mainly for surface groups, in particular in the context of higher Teichmüller spaces and for lattices in \(\mathrm{SO}(1,n)\). In the present paper, the notion of Anosov representation is extended to representations of arbitrary word hyperbolic groups \(\Gamma\) into semisimple Lie groups \(G\), and various basic properties are established. In particular, given an Anosov representation \(\rho\colon\Gamma\to G\), a \(\Gamma\)-invariant open subset of a compact \(G\)-space is constructed on which \(\Gamma\) acts properly discontinuously with compact quotient. Several applications of this construction are presented: to higher Teichmüller spaces (showing that they parametrise locally homogeneous geometric structures on compact manifolds), to the existence of non-standard Clifford-Klein forms of homogeneous spaces, and to compactifications of locally symmetric spaces of infinite volume.