On isospectral locally symmetric spaces and a theorem of von Neumann (Q909042)

Two lattices \(\Gamma_ 1\) and \(\Gamma_ 2\) in a locally compact group G are called isospectral if the representations of G in \(L^ 2(G/\Gamma_ i)\) are unitarily equivalent. The author shows that for semisimple real algebraic groups there are sufficiently many isospectral lattices. The main result is as follows. Let \({\mathbb{G}}\) be a noncompact almost simple connected real algebraic group of the classical type. Then any cocompact lattice in \({\mathbb{G}}\) contains nonisomorphic isospectral torsionfree subgroups of finite index. Among the conditions of this theorem there is also a condition on the rank (boundedness from below) which could perhaps be done weaker. As a consequence new examples of locally symmetric spaces with isospectral Laplacians (including higher-rank spaces) are obtained. At last, it is shown that the von Neumann theorem on discrete spectrum actions of abelian locally compact groups fails for semisimple groups.