Root systems and symmetries of torus manifolds (Q2410919)

A $2n$-dimensional torus manifold is a connected closed smooth manifold admitting an effective smooth action of a compact torus $T^n$ of rank $n$ with a fixed point. The paper under review studies the symmetry of torus manifolds. Specifically the paper studies the extension to a smooth action of a connected compact Lie group of the torus action on a torus manifold by making use of root systems. The authors of the paper under review first consider the root system associated to a finite set in a free abelian group of rank $n$, and show that any irreducible subsystem is of type $A$, $B$, or $D$. Then they apply this to the study of their problem by introducing the root system $R(M)$ of a torus manifold $M$. The main contribution of the paper under review is that if the torus action on $M$ extends to a smooth action of a connected compact Lie group $G$, then the root system of $G$ is a subsystem of $R(M)$, so any irreducible factor of the Lie algebra of $G$ is of type $A$, $B$, or $D$. In particular, the case of type $A$ happens only when the cohomology of $M$ is generated by elements of degree 2. In addition, the case of a torus manifold with an equivariant unitary structure is also investigated, and some interesting results are given.