No label defined (Q4934471)

In this beautiful paper the author considers actions of a locally compact group \(G\) (usually a Lie group or a countable discrete group) on a compact metric space \(X\). A subsemigroup \(S\) of \(G\) acts tautly on \(X\) if any closed subset \(\Lambda\) of \(X\) with \(sA\subseteq A\) for each \(s\in S\) contains a subset \(B\) with \(sB=B\) for each \(s\in S\). \(G\) acts tautly if any (topologically) generating subsemigroup \(S\) acts tautly. It is shown that every action of a group of subexponential growth (e.g. any nilpotent group) is taut. The same is shown for distal actions. An action is called stiff with respect to a probability measure \(\nu\) on \(G\) if every \(\mu\)-stationary measure \(\nu\) on \(X\) (i.e. if \(\mu *\nu=\nu)\) is \(G\)-invariant. The action is stiff if \(G\) acts stiffly with respect to any \(\mu\) such that the support of \(\mu\) generates \(G\) (as a closed group). It is shown that any stiff action is taut and that any action of an abelian group and any distal action is taut. Since any not \(G\)-invariant \(\nu\)-stationary measure \(\mu\) leads to nonconstant bounded \(\mu\)-harmonic functions any CD group \(G\), having by definition no such functions, if ``\(\mu\) generates \(G\)'', acts stiffly, in particular any discrete nilpotent group \(G\), by a result of \textit{Y. Guivarc'h} [Quelques propriétés asymptotiques des produits de matrices aléatoires, École d'été de probabilités de Saint-Flour VIII, 1978, Lect. Notes Math. 774, 117-250 (1980; Zbl 0433.60007)]. If \(G\) is a locally compact group and \(\mu\) absolutely continuous with respect to Haar measure, then the natural action of \(G\) on \(G/ \Gamma\) is stiff with respect to \(\mu\) for any lattice \(\Gamma\) (similar easier tautness results are also shown). Finally it is proved that the natural action of \(\Gamma-Sl_m(Z)\) on the \(m\)-dimensional torus is stiff with respect to any measures \(\mu\) having an absolutely continuous stationary measure (which is unique) for the natural action on \(Sl_m(R)/P\), where \(P\) denotes the minimal parabolic subgroup consisting of all upper triangular matrices such that \(\sum_\Gamma \log\|\gamma\|\mu(\gamma)<\infty\) \((\|\gamma \|\) any vector space norm). For the entire collection see [Zbl 0927.00025].