Continuous quotients for lattice actions on compact spaces. (Q5955158)

The paper contains a topological result for actions of lattices \(\Gamma\) in simple Lie groups of rank at least \(2\) on a compact manifold \(M\) preserving a measure which is positive on open sets. The main result investigates the action of \(\Gamma\) on the first homology group \(H_1 (M; \mathbb Z)\) of \(M\). Under some mild genericity assumption, it is shown that there is a finite index subgroup \(\Gamma^\prime\) of \(\Gamma\) and a \(\Gamma^\prime\)-equivariant map \(M \to T^n\) where \(n\) is the first Betti number of \(M\) and the \(\Gamma^\prime\)-action on the \(n\)-torus \(T^n\) is linear and determined by the linear action of \(\Gamma^\prime\) on \(H_1 (M ; \mathbb Z)\). The proof used methods developed by Zimmer. The second part of the paper is devoted to the discussion of examples.