The Jordan property for Lie groups and automorphism groups of complex spaces (Q1668075)

For a group \(G\), set \(J_G := \sup_F \min_A (F:A)\) where \(F\) ranges over the finite subgroups of \(G\), and \(A\) ranges over the commutative subgroups of \(F\). We call \(G\) a Jordan group if \(J_G\) is finite. This is named after Jordan's result that \(\mathrm{GL}_n(\Bbbk)\) has this property for any field \(\Bbbk\) of characteristic zero. The problem is to determine, for a given algebraically closed field \(\Bbbk\) of characteristic zero, which \(\Bbbk\)-variety \(X\) satisfies that \(\mathrm{Aut}(X)\) is Jordan. \textit{S. Meng} and \textit{D.-Q. Zhang} [Am. J. Math. 140, No. 4, 1133--1145 (2018; Zbl 1428.14023)] showed that \(\mathrm{Aut}(X)\) is Jordan for all projective varieties \(X\). Their argument is based on the key property that all algebraic groups are Jordan. In this short paper, the author proves several properties about \(J_G\) that entail the key fact allueded to above. Set \(b_H := \sup_F |F|\) where \(F\) ranges over the finite subgroups of \(H\), and call \(H\) bounded if \(b_H\) is finite. For a finite-dimensional real Lie group \(G\), Theorem 2 says that \(G\) is Jordan whenever \(G/G^\circ\) is bounded, and Theorem 3 gives a precise bound for \(J_G\) and the \(J\)-constants for \(\mathrm{GL}_n\). The idea is to bound the minimal possible dimension of faithful linear representations of simple and simply connected linear groups. An interesting corolloary of Theorem 2 is that for such \(G\) the set of isomorphism classes of finite simple subgroups of \(G\) is finite. Theorem 4 gives the same bound on \(J_G\), this time for \(n\)-dimensional algebraic groups over \(\Bbbk\), by using the Lefschetz principle. The remaining Theorems 5--10 explore the Jordan property for \(\mathrm{Aut}(C)^0\) or \(\mathrm{Aut}(C)\), where \(C\) can be a compact complex analytic space, a Kobayashi-hyperbolic connected complex manifold, strongly pseudoconvex bounded domains in \(\mathbb{C}^n\), and the isometry groups of connected Riemann surfaces.