Rigidity for quasi-Möbius actions on fractal metric spaces (Q2351865)

A group action \(\Gamma\) of homeomorphisms on a metric space \((Z,d)\) is said to be strongly quasi-Möbius if for some constant \(C\geq 1\) \[ \frac{d(g(x_1),g(x_3)) d(g(x_2),g(x_4))}{d(g(x_1),g(x_4))d(g(x_2),g(x_3))} \leq C\, \frac{d(x_1,x_3) d(x_2,x_4)}{d(x_1,x_4)d(x_2,x_3)} \] holds for all distinct four-tuples \(x_i\in Z\) and all \(g\in \Gamma\), and it is said to be cocompact on triples if for some \(\delta> 0\), given any distinct 3-tuples \(x_i\) there exists \(g\in \Gamma\) such that \(d(g(x_i),g(x_j))\geq \delta\) for \(i\neq j\). A \(\delta\)-path from \(x\) to \(y\) is a chain of length \(l\) of elements in \(Z\), \(x=z_0,z_1, \ldots, z_l=y\) with \(d(z_i,z_{i-1})\leq\delta\). The main theorem 1.5 states the following: Let \(Z\) be a compact, connected metric space, and assume it is Ahlfors regular of dimension \(n/\epsilon\), for some \(n\in \mathbb{N}\) and \(0<\epsilon\leq 1\), that is, for some constant \(C\geq 1\), \(C^{-1} r^{n/\epsilon}\leq \mu(B(x,r))\leq C r^{n/\epsilon}\) for any \(x\in Z\) and \(r\leq \mathrm{diam} Z\), where \(\mu\) is the \((n/\epsilon)\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure. If \(\Gamma\) is a strongly quasi-Möbius action on \(Z\) and cocompact on triples, and \(Z\) satisfies an additional condition that each \(\delta\)-path from \(x\) to \(y\) has length \(\geq c(d(x,y)/\delta)^{1/\epsilon}\), then a metric \(d_{\mathrm{new}}\) is defined on \(Z\) equivalent to \(d^{1/\epsilon}\) for which a bi-Lipschitz homeomorphism is defined between \((Z, d_{\mathrm{new}})\) and \(\mathbb{S}^n\). If \(n\geq 2\) this map can be taken to conjugate the action of \(\Gamma\) on \(Z\) to an action on \(\mathbb{S}^n\) by Möbius transformation of \(\mathbb{S}^n\). The concepts used for metric spaces are justified by the author recalling some rigidity results for Riemannian metrics with negative curvature bounded from above by \(-1\) and of same volume or entropy when one of the metrics is locally symmetric and \(\Gamma\) is the fundamental group inducing an action on the ideal boundary of the covering space namely the \textit{U. Hamenstädt} ridity theorem for the entropy for spaces of negative curvature [Ann. Math. (2) 131, No. 1, 35--51 (1990; Zbl 0699.53049)] and some generalizations, as for example rigidity for quasi-Möbius group actions due to \textit{M. Bonk} and \textit{B. Kleiener} [J. Differ. Geom. 61, No. 1, 81--106 (2002; Zbl 1044.37015)] on Ahlfors \(n\)-regular metric spaces with topological dimension \(n\). The author developed a corresponding coarse rigidity theorem. A proper geodesic Gromov hyperbolic metric space \(X\) is considered and \(\Gamma\) a quasi convex group action on \(X\) inducing an action on the ideal boundary \(\partial_{\infty}X\) of X by the limit set \(\Lambda(\Gamma)\) of \(\Gamma\) on \(\partial_{\infty}X\). It is assumed that \(\Lambda(\Gamma)\) is homeomorphic to \(\mathbb{S}^{n}\), \(n\geq 2\) and some orbit space \(\Gamma p\) has asymptotic upper curvature bound \(-1\), that is for some \(p'\) in the orbit space and some constant \(c\geq 0\) \[ (x_0,x_n)_{p'}\geq \min_{1\leq i\leq n}(x_i,x_{i-1})_{p'}-\log n -c \] for all chains \(x_0,\ldots, x_n\in \Gamma p\), where \((x,y)_{p'}=\frac{1}{2}(d(x,p)+d(y,p)-d(x,y))\) is the Gromov product in the orbit space. Under these conditions, the main theorem 1.8 on coarse rigidity states that, if \(n\geq 2\), then the exponential growth rate satisfies \(e(\Gamma)=\limsup_{R\to \infty} \frac{\log(N(R))}{R}\) is \(\geq n\), where \(N(R)\) is the number of points in the orbit of distance at most \(R\) from \(p\), and equality holds if and only if \(\Gamma p\) is roughly isometric to \(\mathbb{H}^{n+1}\) equivariantly w.r.t. the geometric action of \(\Gamma\) on \(\mathbb{H}^{n+1}\).