Local rigidity of certain actions of solvable groups on the boundaries of rank-one symmetric spaces (Q2026754)

The main concepts of the reviewed article are the \textit{standard subgroups} and their \textit{locally rigid} actions on the boundary of a rank-one symmetric space \(X\) of non-compact type. If we consider \(G\) to be the group of all orientation-preserving isometries of \(X\) and an Iwasawa decomposition \(G=KAN\), the boundary of \(X\) is the compact manifold \(G/P\), where \(P=MAN\) is a minimal parabolic subgroup of \(G\). Moreover, \(G/P\) as a manifold is a disjoint union of a point and a Euclidean space, thus a sphere. Notice \(A\) is a \(1\)-dimensional abelian group, and the action of \(G\) on \(G/P\) is by left translation, denoted in what follows by \(l\). A group \(\Gamma < G\) is called \textit{standard} if it is generated by a non-trivial element \(a \in A\) and a lattice \(\Lambda \subset N\) of \(N\) satisfying \(a \Lambda a^{-1} \subset \Lambda\). One can notice \(\Gamma\) fixes pointwise the point in the boundary at infinity of the symmetric space \(X\) that corresponds to the minimal parabolic subgroup \(P=MAN\) of \(G\). Let us define local rigidity. Consider \(H\) to be a topological group. Two homomorphisms \(\rho_1,\rho_2 \in \Hom(\Gamma,H)\) are said to be conjugate to each other if there is an element \(h \in H\) such that \(h\rho_1(\gamma) h^{-1}=\rho_2(\gamma)\) for every \(\gamma \in \Gamma\). The set \(\Hom(\Gamma,H)\) is considered with the topology induced from the product topology \(H^{\Gamma}\). Then \(\rho \in \Hom(\Gamma,H)\) is said to be \textit{locally rigid} if the conjugacy class of \(\rho\) is a neighborhood of \(\rho\). If we take \(H = \mathrm{Diff}(M)\) the group of \(C^{\infty}\)-diffeomorphisms of a compact manifold \(M\) and endow \(H\) with a \(C^r\)-topology (\(r \in \{0,1,\ldots,\infty\}\)), then the corresponding local rigidity is called \textit{\(C^{r}\)-local rigidity}. The main theorem of the article under review is a \textit{weak} \(C^{2}\)-local rigidity result for standard subgroups of \(G\) as above. Combining this main theorem with the techniques used in the article, Okada can show \(C^{2}\)-local rigidity (in the stric sense) when \(G=\mathrm{Sp}(n+1,1)\) (\(n\geq 2\)) and \(G=F_{4}^{-20}\) (see Corollary 1.3). But for the remaining cases of rank-one groups, \(G= \mathrm{SO}_{0}(n+1,1)\) (\(n \geq 2\)), \(G=\mathrm{SU}(n+1,1)\) (\(n \geq 2\)), standard group actions are showed to not be \(C^{2}\)-locally rigid anymore (see Proposition 8.4 and the Introduction). \textbf{Main Theorem}. Let \(G\) be the group of orientation-preserving isometries of a rank-one symmetric space of non-compact type, \(\Gamma\) a standard subgroup of \(G\), and \(l\vert_{\Gamma}\) the action of \(\Gamma\) on \(G/P\) by left translations. Assume \(G\neq \mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{R})\). If \(\rho\) is a \(C^{\infty}\) action of \(\Gamma\) on \(G/P\) sufficiently \(C^{2}\)-close to \(l\vert_{\Gamma}\), then there is an embedding \(\iota\) of \(\Gamma\) into \(G\) as a standard subgroup and a \(C^{\infty}\) diffeomorphism \(h\) of \(G/P\) such that \[\rho(g)= h\circ l(\iota(g))\circ h^{-1} \; \; \text{ for all } g \in \Gamma.\] Because \(\iota(\Gamma)\) might be different than \(\Gamma\), the main theorem gives a \textit{weak} local rigidity result. The main ingredients to prove the main Theorem are: the Lie algebras \(\mathfrak{g},\mathfrak{n},\mathfrak{a}\) of \(G, N,A\), resp., the group \(J^{3}(G/P, o)\) of \(3\)-jets around the point \(o=eP \in G/P\) fixed by the action \(l\vert_{\Gamma}\), and a clever reduction of the problem to local rigidity of a homomorphism of \(\Gamma\) to \(J^{3}(G/P, o)\). Moreover, a second clever reduction is used and in fact the problem reduces to the computation of the cohomology \(H^{1}(\mathfrak{n},\mathfrak{j}^{3}(G/P,o))^{\mathfrak{a}}\), where \(\mathfrak{j}^{3}(G/P,o)\) is the Lie algebra of \(J^{3}(G/P, o)\). In addition, Okada can prove that \(H^{1}(\mathfrak{n},\mathfrak{j}^{3}(G/P,o))^{\mathfrak{a}}= H^{1}(\mathfrak{n},\mathfrak{g})^{\mathfrak{a}}\). Then, \( H^{1}(\mathfrak{n},\mathfrak{g})^{\mathfrak{a}}=0\) if and only if \(G=\mathrm{Sp}(n+1,1)\) (\(n\geq 2\)), or \(G=F_{4}^{-20}\), implying the local rigidity in the strict sense.