Deforming convex projective manifolds (Q1746304)

Let \(M\) be a \(n\)-dimensional compact manifold, possibly with boundary. To certain representations of the fundamental group \(\pi_1(M)\) into the general linear group \(\mathrm{GL}(n+1, \mathbb R)\) are associated projective structures on the interior of \(M\); the representation is then called the holonomy of the structure. For example, this is the case if \(\rho : \pi_1(M) \to \mathrm{GL}(n+1, \mathbb R)\) acts freely and properly discontinuously on a convex subset \(\Omega\) of \(\mathbb{RP}^n\) (the image of a convex cone in \(\mathbb R^{n+1}\)) with quotient diffeomorphic to the interior of \(M\). A special case is when \(\Omega\) is the negative cone of a quadratic form of signature \((n, 1)\) and the representation's image lies in \(\mathrm{SO}(n, 1)\), in which case this gives the interior of \(M\) the structure of a complete hyperbolic manifold. If \(M\) is compact then local, or Calabi-Weil, rigidity states that deforming the representation inside \(\mathrm{SO}(n, 1)\) still gives a hyperbolic structure on \(M\). For more general projective structures on a compact manifold \(M\) it is still true that a deformation will still give a projective structure; in other words, the set of holonomies is an open subset of the representation space \(\mathrm{Hom}(\pi_1(M), \mathrm{GL}_{n+1}(\mathbb R))\). In this paper the authors are interested in properly convex projective structures on manifolds with boundary, meaning that there are no lines on the boundary of \(\Omega\). In this case deformations are not always holonomies of complete structures; this already happens in hyperbolic geometry in dimension 2 and 3, as cusps can be deformed to cone points. However one recovers openness of holonomies for finite-volume hyperbolic manifolds by considering the smallest subset of representations which are type-preserving, in the sense that the holonomy of a cusp consists of unipotent elements. The main result of the paper is a generalisation of this to the setting of properly convex projective structures; it states that deformations keeping the holonomy of boundary components of \(M\) inside Borel subgroups remain holonomies of properly convex projective structures. In hyperbolic geometry the main ingredient which allows to generalise local rigidity from compact to finite-volume manifolds is the analysis of small deformations of cusps. In this paper the authors provide a similar study concerning the notion of a generalised cusp. One can also consider structures on the interior of \(M\) with some boundary components added; for example convex-cocompact or more generally geometrically finite hyperbolic manifolds with full-rank cusps fall in this category. The present paper is entirely written in this more general setting.