Nilpotent groups of automorphisms of families of Riemann surfaces (Q2118019)

A lot of work has been made on studying the groups of automorphisms of Riemann surfaces. In particular, their order is bounded above by \(84(g-1)\) when the surface has genus \(g \geq 2\), and every finite group is a group of automorphisms of some surface. These facts lead to consider specific classes of groups. For instance, \textit{R. Zomorrodian} obtained in [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 288, 241--255 (1985; Zbl. 0565.20029)] that the order of a nilpotent group of automorphisms of a Riemann surface of genus \(g \geq 2\) is at most \(16(g-1)\). This bound is sharp if \(g-1\) is a power of \(2\). In the paper under review the author extends this result to \(d\)-dimensional families of Riemann surfaces for \(d \geq 1\). The main result is Theorem 1: Let \(d \geq 1\), \(g \geq 2\), and \(G\) a nilpotent group of automorphisms of a \(d\)-dimensional family of Riemann surfaces of genus \(g\). Then, the order of \(G\) is at most \(8(g-1)\) if \(d=1\), and \(\frac{4}{d-1}(g-1)\) if \(d \geq 2\), and if the upper bound is attained, then \(G\) is a \(2\)-group. For \(d=1\), Theorem 2 provides explicitly a family of surfaces of genus \(1 + 2^{n-3}\) with nilpotent group of automorphisms of order \(2^n\), showing that the bound is sharp. Next, the author turns to \(p\)-groups, for \(p \geq 3\) a prime number, and obtains in Theorem 3 the upper bound for the order of a \(p\)-group of automorphisms of a \(d\)-dimensional family of Riemann surfaces. Finally, he proves in Theorem 4 that the bound is sharp for \(d=1\).