Periodic flats and group actions on locally symmetric spaces (Q1945749)

The following result is proved: Let \((M,g)\) be a complete Riemannian manifold homeomorphic to a finite volume nonpositively curved locally symmetric space with no local torus factors. Then the isometry group \(\text{Isom}(M,g)\) of \(M\) acts on the free homotopy classes of loops and the induced homomorphism \[ \rho: \text{Isom}(M,g) \rightarrow \text{Out}(\pi_1(M)) \] is injective. If, in the above situation, the locally symmetric space is irreducible of dimension greater than or equal to three, then it follows from Margulis--Mostow--Prasad rigidity that \(\text{Out}(\pi_1(M))\) is isomorphic to the isometry group of the locally symmetric metric \(h_{\text{sym}}\). Therefore in this case \(h_{\text{sym}}\) is the most symmetric metric on \(M\). It is also shown that any complete finite volume Riemannian metric \(g\) on a finite volume, irreducible, locally symmetric manifold \((M,h_{\text{sym}})\) of dimension at least three has one of the following two properties: \(\bullet\) \(g\) is a constant multiple of \(h_{\text{sym}}\), or \(\bullet\) the isometry group \(\text{Isom}(\tilde{M},\tilde{g})\) of the universial covering of \((M,g)\) is discrete and contains \(\pi_1(M)\) as a subgroup of index \(\leq \text{vol}(M,h_{\text{sym}})/\epsilon(h_{\text{sym}})\), where \(\epsilon(h_{\text{sym}})\) is the volume of the smallest locally symmetric orbifold coverd by \((M,h_{\text{sym}})\).