Weakly commensurable arithmetic groups and isospectral locally symmetric spaces (Q1026659)

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, the authors introduce and analyze a new relationship between (Zariski-dense) abstract subgroups of the groups of \(F\)-rational points of two connected semi-simple algebraic groups defined over a field \(F,\) which they call weak commensurability. Second, the authors use results and conjectures in transcendental number theory to relate weak commensurability with interesting differential geometric problems on length-commensurable, and isospectral, locally symmetric spaces, and to settle a series of open questions in this area by applying results on weakly commensurable arithmetic (and more general) subgroups. Theorem 1. Let \(G_{1}\) and \(G_{2}\) be two connected absolutely almost simple algebraic groups defined over a field \(F\) of characteristic zero. Assume that for \(i = 1,2,\) there exist finitely generated Zariski-dense subgroups \(\Gamma_{i}\) of \(G_{i}(F)\) which are weakly commensurable. Then either \(G_{1}\) and \(G_{2}\) are of the same Killing-Cartan type, or one of them is of type \(B_{n}\) and the other is of type \(C_{n}.\) Theorem 3. Let \(G_{1}\) and \(G_{2}\) be two connected absolutely almost simple algebraic groups defined over a field \(F\) of characteristic zero. If Zariski-dense \(({S}_{i}, K_{i}, S_{i})\)-arithmetic subgroups \(\Gamma_{i}\) of \(G_{i}(F)\) are weakly commensurable for \(i = 1, 2,\) then \(K_{1} = K_{2}\) and \(S_{1} = S_{2}.\)