Simplicial volume of closed locally symmetric spaces of non-compact type (Q858559)

The authors prove that any closed locally symmetric space of non-compact type has positive (Gromov) simplicial volume. The main tool is a version of Thurston's straightening procedure of singular chains, which allows to bound from below the simplicial volume \(\| M \|\) of a closed Riemannian manifold \(M\) of dimension \(n\) by the ratio between the volume of \(M\) and the maximal volume of a straightened \(n\)-simplex. The straightening used in this paper is based on the barycenter method, introduced by Besson, Courtois and Gallot to prove the rank-one minimal entropy rigidity conjecture for locally symmetric spaces, in the form developed by Connell and Farb for higher rank spaces. This method homotopes a map with negatively curved target to a \(C^1\)-map, the ``natural map'', by first mapping the source space to the space of measures on the boundary at infinity of the target, and then to the target by taking the center of mass of the measures. The authors show how a result of Connell and Farb can be used to find an upper bound for the Jacobian of the natural map, for locally symmetric spaces of non-compact type with no local direct factors locally isometric to \(\mathbb{H}^2\) or \(SL(3,\mathbb{R})/SO(3)\). From this an uniform upper bound for the volume of top dimensional simplices follows directly.