Quasi-isometric embeddings of symmetric spaces and lattices: reducible case (Q1995592)

The main goal of the paper is a rigidity result for quasi-isometric embeddings of higher-rank symmetrics spaces. Roughly speaking, the author shows that every quasi-isometric embedding can be coarsely factored as a product of quasi-isometric embeddings into irreducible factors. More precisely, given products \(X=X_1 \times \cdots \times X_n\) and \(Y=Y_1 \times \cdots \times Y_m\) of either symmetric spaces or Euclidean buildings (without compact/Euclidean factors) and a quasi-isometric embedding \(f:X \rightarrow Y\), then \(f\) is at bounded distance from a product of quasi-isometric embeddings of the form \(f_i:X'_i \rightarrow Y_i\), where \(X'_i\) is a product of irreducible factors of \(X\) and \(\text{rank}(X'_i)=\text{rank}(Y_i)\) for \(i=1,\dots,m\). The proof of the theorem relies on the study of the asymptotic cones of the given spaces and on a coarse factorization result for bi-Lipischitz embeddings between \(\mathbb{R}\)-branched Euclidean buildings. A similar rigidity statement is also proved for higher-rank non-uniform lattices. For pairs of such lattices the author gives a criterion for which a quasi-isometric embedding is at bounded distance from a homomorphism (possibly defined up to a finite index subgroup). The paper ends with some examples where rigidity does not hold.