Joinings of higher-rank diagonalizable actions on locally homogeneous spaces (Q2371894)

\textit{H. Furstenberg} [Math. Syst. Theory 1, 1--49 (1967; Zbl 0146.28502)] introduced the notion of joinings between measure-preserving actions and described situations in which individual elements of a group action may be far from rigid (that is, may possess many closed nontrivial invariant sets and many nonatomic invariant measures) while the whole action exhibits rigidity. Many of the important subsequent developments link rigidity of measures to descriptions of the space of joinings, and exhibit measure rigidity for large classes of group actions under some additional hypothesis (typically the assumption that some elements of the action give the measure in question positive entropy). In this paper rigidity of joinings between a large class of higher-rank diagonalizable actions on locally homogeneous spaces is shown, without any additional entropy hypothesis. These results are used to deduce a classification of the measurable factors of such actions following a method initiated by \textit{D. Witte} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 345, No.~2, 577--594 (1994; Zbl 0831.28010)], and further results on equidistribution of orbits following a method of Furstenberg. \textit{B. Kalinin} and \textit{R. Spatzier} [Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 25, No.~1, 175--200 (2005; Zbl 1073.37005)] gave results on the structure of joinings of such actions under the assumption that the joining made certain one-parameter subgroups ergodic. Here entropy methods related to those used by \textit{M. Einsiedler} and \textit{A. Katok} [Isr. J. Math. 148, 169--238 (2005; Zbl 1097.37017)] and \textit{M. Einsiedler} and the reviewer [J. Reine Angew. Math. 584, 195--214 (2005; Zbl 1198.37010)] are used to end up in a situation where \textit{M. Ratner}'s theorem [Ann. Math. (2) 134, No.~3, 545--607 (1991; Zbl 0763.28012)] can be applied.