Perturbations of invariant metrics and associated isometry groups (Q1916463)

Let \(G\) be a compact connected Lie group acting smoothly and non-transitively on a compact connected smooth manifold \(M\). In the paper's main result the authors construct an uncountable family of homothetically disjoint and mutually conformal metrics such that the volume function on a prescribed set of principal orbits assumes a prescribed set of values. As an application of this result the authors investigate the isometry groups of maximal dimension on smooth manifolds. For example, if \(M\) is a compact connected smooth manifold, the authors denote by \(N(M)\) the maximal dimension of the isometry groups of all possible Riemannian metrics on \(M\) (that is the degree of symmetry of \(M\)) and show that (if \(M\) is not a homogeneous space) there exist infinitely many homothetically distinct Riemannian metrics on \(M\) with isomorphic isometry groups of dimension \(N(M)\).