Some ergodic and rigidity properties of discrete Heisenberg group actions (Q1618144)

The authors study ergodic and rigidity properties of smooth actions of the discrete Heisenberg group. They establish the decomposition of the tangent space of a smooth compact Riemann manifold for Lyapunov exponents, and show that all Lyapunov exponents for the central elements are zero. They prove that if an action contains an Anosov element, then under certain conditions on the eigenvalues of this element, the action of each central element is of finite order. (In particular, there is no faithful codimension one Anosov Heisenberg group action on any compact manifold, and there is no faithful codimension two Anosov Heisenberg group action on tori.) Finally, they prove smooth local rigidity for higher rank ergodic actions by toral automorphisms, using a generalization of the Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser iterative scheme.