Local rigidity in quaternionic hyperbolic space (Q1041252)

The authors consider rigidity of an embedded lattice in \(Sp(n,1)\) in a viewpoint of Lie group theory. Let \(\mathbb{H}\) be the quaternions and let \(Sp(n,1)\) be the quaternionic hyperbolic Lie group given by \[ Sp(n,1)=\{A \in GL_{n+1}\mathbb{H} \mid A^*JA=J\}, \] where \(J=\text{diag}(1,\dots,1,-1)\in GL_{n+1}\mathbb{H}\). Let \(\Gamma\) be a lattice in \(Sp(1,1)\) and observe whether an embedding \(\Gamma\to Sp(2,1)\) is deformable. In this paper, one of the important points is a quaternionic hyperbolic line (in the quaternionic hyperbolic \(2\)-space \(H^2_{\mathbb{H}}\)) as a stabilizer of an action of \(\Gamma\). Naturally \(Sp(2,1)\) contains \(Sp(1)\times Sp(1,1) \supset U(1)\times Sp(1,1)\). If \(H^1(\Gamma,\mathbb{R})\neq 0\) then the trivial representation \(\Gamma \to U(1)\) can be deformed and such deformations stabilize a quaternionic hyperbolic line. The main theorem of this article is that if an embedding \(\Gamma\to Sp(2,1)\) stabilize a line \(L\) then every deformation stabilizes \(L\) if and only if the lattice is uniform. As an application, the authors show criteria of deformations of embedded lattices in the real hyperbolic plane into \(Sp(2,1)\).