Continuous families of Riemannian manifolds, isospectral on functions but not on 1-forms (Q1589325)

The author presents the first continuous families of Riemannian manifolds that are isospectral on functions but not on 1-forms, and, simultaneously, the first continuous families of Riemannian manifolds with the same marked length spectrum but not the same 1-form spectrum. The presented examples are the three-step Riemannian nilmanifolds, arising from a general method for constructing isospectral Riemannian nilmanifolds previously presented by the author. This method combines techniques from Riemannian geometry and representation theory. Examples of isospectral manifolds that are not isospectral on forms are sparse, as most examples of isospectral manifolds arise from the Sunada's method or its generalizations, hence are strongly isospectral. Gordon and Wilson constructed the first examples of nontrivial isospectral deformations, continuous families of Riemannian nilmanifolds, but they are strongly isospectral and must have the same marked length spectrum. Conversely, Ouyang and Pesce independently showed that all isospectral deformations of two-step nilmanifolds must arise from the Gordon-Wilson method, and Eberlein showed that all pairs of two-step nilmanifolds with the same marked length spectrum must come from the Gordon-Wilson method.