A topological necessary condition for the existence of compact Clifford-Klein forms (Q2354904)

The author proves a necessary cohomological condition for the existence of a compact Clifford-Klein form of a homogeneous space \(G/H\) of reductive type. Let \(G \subset \mathrm{GL}(N, \mathbb R)\) be a linear reductive Lie group and \(H \subset G\) be a closed connected subgroup which is reductive in G. Let \(G_{\mathbb C}\) and \(H_{\mathbb C}\) are complexifications of Lie groups \(G\) and \(H\) respectively. Let \(G_U = G_{\mathbb C} \cap U(N)\) and \(H_U = H_{\mathbb C} \cap U(N)\); they are compact connected real forms of \(G_{\mathbb C}\) and \(H_{\mathbb C}\) respectively. Finally, the subgroup \(K_H = H \cap O(N)\) is the maximal compact subgroup of \(H\). The following statement is the main result of this paper: Let \(G/H\) be a homogeneous space of reductive type, \(G_U /H_U\) be the compact homogeneous space associated to \(G/H\) and \(K_H\) the maximal compact subgroup of \(H\). If the homomorphism \(\pi^\ast : H^\ast(G_U /H_U; \mathbb C) \to H^\ast (G_U /K_H ; \mathbb C)\), induced by the projection \(\pi : G_U /K_H \to G_U /H_U\), is not injective, then \(G/H\) does not admit a compact Clifford-Klein form. Then the author gives a sufficient condition for non-injectivity, using the Chern-Weil characteristic homomorphism. As an application of this result, a lot of examples (some of them are new) of symmetric and nonsymmetric spaces \(G/H\), which do not admit compact Clifford-Klein forms, are given.