A canonical arithmetic quotient for actions of lattices in simple groups (Q5951484)

In his 1986 ICM address [Proc. Int. Congr. Math., Berkeley, CA, 1986, Vol. 2, 1247-1258 (1987; Zbl 0671.57028)] \textit{R. J. Zimmer} announced a program to classify all actions of lattices \(\Gamma\) in simple Lie groups by comparing them to certain arithmetically constructed actions. In the paper under review the author defines an ordering on the arithmetically constructed quotients of an arbitrary action of \(\Gamma\) and shows that with respect to this ordering there is a unique maximal arithmetic quotient for any finite measure preserving, finite entropy, ergodic action. This quotient may be regarded as an invariant of the original action. This work is closely related to work of Lubotzky and Zimmer on actions of connected simple Lie groups [\textit{A. Lubotzky} and \textit{R. J. Zimmer}, A canonical arithmetic quotient for simple group actions, preprint].