Generalizing a realization result of B. Zimmermann and K. B. Lee to infranilmanifolds (Q799989)

An infranilmanifold is a manifold finitely covered by a nilmanifold L(N)/N, where L(N) is a 1-connected nilpotent Lie-group and N a discrete uniform lattice in L(N), with affine covering group (the case \(L(N)={\mathbb{R}}^ n\) corresponds to flat manifolds). Let M be a (closed) infranilmanifold and \(G\subset Out \pi_ 1M\) a finite subgroup of the outer automorphism group of \(\pi_ 1M\). It is shown that there exists a finite inflation \(H\twoheadrightarrow G\) such that H acts effectively on M by affine diffeomorphisms inducing the prescribed action of G on \(\pi_ 1M\) (the group G itself can only be realized by diffeomorphisms if there exists an extension \(1\to\pi_ 1M\hookrightarrow E\to G\to 1\) to the operation of G on \(\pi_ 1M).\) Then very explicitly an example of such a manifold M is discussed and a subgroup \({\mathbb{Z}}_ 2\subset Out \pi_ 1M\) is constructed such that \({\mathbb{Z}}_ 2\) cannot be realized, however the inflation \({\mathbb{Z}}_ 4\twoheadrightarrow {\mathbb{Z}}_ 2\) can be realized.