Infra-solvmanifolds and rigidity of subgroups in solvable linear algebraic groups (Q1876212)

A closed manifold \(M\) is topologically (smoothly,\dots, isometrically) rigid if every homotopy equivalence \(h:N\to M\) from another manifold \(N\) is homotopic to a homeomorphism (diffeomorphism,\dots, isometry). The paper gives a comprehensive survey on this topic. In well-known cases, smoth rigidity properties of geometric manifolds are closely connected to rigidity properties of lattices in Lie groups. The aim of the present paper is to establish the smooth rigidity of infra-solvmanifolds from natural rigidity properties of virtually polycyclic groups in linear algebraic groups. This approach leads to a new proof of the rigidity of infra-solvmanifolds, and also to a geometric characterization of infra-solvmanifolds in terms of polynomial actions on affine space \(\mathbb{R}^n\). Here an infra-solvmanifold is defined as a manifold of the form \(\Delta \setminus G\), where \(G\) is a connected, simply connected solvable Lie group. Let \(Aff(G)\) denote the semi-direct product \(G\rtimes\Aut(G)\), where \(\Aut(G)\) is the group of automorphism of \(G\). \(Aff(G)\) is a transformation group acting on \(G\). If \(\Delta\) is a subgroup of \(Aff(G)\) (with component \(\Delta_0\) of identity), then \(\text{hol}(\Delta)\leq \Aut (G)\) denotes its image under the natural homomorphism \(Aff(G)\to\Aut (G)\). Let now \(\Delta\) be a torsion-free subgroup of \(Aff(G)\) with the assumption: the closure of \(\text{hol}(\Delta)\) in \(\Aut(G)\) is compact. Then \(\Delta\setminus G\) is a smooth manifold with universal cover diffeomorphic to \(\mathbb{R}^n\), \(m=\dim G-\dim\Delta_0\). The fundamental group of \(\Delta\setminus G\) is isomorphic to \(\Gamma=\Delta/ \Delta_0\) and it is finitely covered by a solvamanifold, i.e., a homogeneous space of a solvable Lie group. For other concepts, results and references the reviewer hints to this very informative paper.