On the Poisson relation for compact Lie groups

Global Riemannian geometry, including pinching (53C20) Geodesics in global differential geometry (53C22) Differential geometry of homogeneous manifolds (53C30) Differential geometry of symmetric spaces (53C35) Spectral problems; spectral geometry; scattering theory on manifolds (58J50)

Abstract: Intuition drawn from quantum mechanics and geometric optics raises the following long-standing question: can the length spectrum of a closed Riemannian manifold be recovered from its Laplace spectrum? The Poisson relation states that for any closed Riemannian manifold

(M, g)

the singular support of the trace of its wave group---a spectrally determined tempered distribution---is contained in the set consisting of

p m a u

, where

a u

is the length of a smoothly closed geodesic in

(M, g)

. Therefore, in cases where the Poisson relation is an equality, we obtain a method for retrieving the length spectrum of a manifold from its Laplace spectrum. The Poisson relation is known to be an equality for sufficiently "bumpy" Riemannian manifolds and there are no known counterexamples. We demonstrate that the Poisson relation is an equality for a compact Lie group equipped with a generic bi-invariant metric. Consequently, the length spectrum of a generic bi-invariant metric (and the rank of its underlying Lie group) can be recovered from its Laplace spectrum. Furthermore, we exhibit a substantial collection

m a t h s c r G

of compact Lie groups---including those that are either tori, simple, simply-connected, or products thereof---with the property that for each group

U i n m a t h s c r G

the Laplace spectrum of any bi-invariant metric

g

carried by

U

encodes the length spectrum of

g

and the rank of

U

. The preceding statements are special cases of results concerning compact globally symmetric spaces for which the semi-simple part of the universal cover is split-rank. The manifolds considered herein join a short list of families of non-"bumpy" Riemannian manifolds for which the Poisson relation is known to be an equality.

Review text

Let \((M,g)\) be a closed Riemannian manifold. Its Laplace-Beltrami spectrum \(\mathrm{Spec}_\Lambda(g)\) is the set of eigenvalues (counted with multiplicity) of the Laplace-Beltrami operator \(\Delta_g\), its length spectrum \(\mathrm{Spec}_L(g)\) is the set of lengths of the closed geodesics (or the periods of its geodesic flow \((\Phi_t)_{t\ge0}\) on the unitary cotangent space, also counted with multiplicity). These two spectra are related by the so called Poisson relation: the singular support of the distributional trace \(\mathrm{Tr}\left(e^{it\sqrt{\Delta_g}}\right)\) on \(\mathbb{R}_t\) is included in the symmetric length spectrum \(\pm\mathrm{Spec}_L(g)\) [\textit{J. J. Duistermaat} and \textit{V. W. Guillemin}, Invent. Math. 29, 39--79 (1975; Zbl 0307.35071)], see also [\textit{Y. Colin de Verdiere}, Ann. Inst. Fourier 57, No. 7, 2429--2463 (2007; Zbl 1142.35057)]). The problem of the equality of these two spectra is at the heart of this paper, often formulated as the length spectrum \(\mathrm{Spec}_L(g)\) determination by the spectral spectrum \(\mathrm{Spec}_\Lambda(g)\). Examples of Riemannian spaces with the equality are given by the compact rank-one symmetric spaces (i.e. \(\mathbb{S}^n\), \(\mathbb{R}P^n\), \(\mathbb{C}P^n\), \(\mathbb{R}H^n\) and \(\mathbb{C}a^2\)), the similar case of Zoll manifolds and, at opposite, by bumpy metrics (which may have a simple length spectrum). This paper gives a large collection of other examples, built in the framework of compact Lie groups and homogenous spaces. The analysis of the distribution \(\mathrm{Tr}\left(e^{it\sqrt{\Delta_g}}\right)\) singularities is done by Duistermaat-Guillemin under a clean hypothesis: a manifold \(M\) is said to be \textit{clean} if each period \(\tau\) of its geodesic flow \(\Phi_t\) is clean, meaning that the fixed point set \(\mathrm{Fix}(\Phi_\tau)\) is a union of finitely many closed submanifolds \(Z_1,\dots,Z_r\) such that for each \(u\in Z_j\) the fixed point set \(\mathrm{Fix}(T_u\Phi_\tau)\) is equal to the tangent space \(T_uZ_j\). The first important result asserts that any compact globally symmetric space is clean. However, the example of the (unclean) Berger metrics on \(\mathrm{SO}(3)\) or \(\mathrm{SU}(2)\) indicates the existence of unclean homogenous spaces. To look at the spectra of a compact symmetric space \((M=G/K,g)\), the author recalls its structure as detailed by \textit{O. Loos} [Symmetric spaces. I: General theory. II: Compact spaces and classification. New York-Amsterdam: W. A. Benjamin, Inc. (1969; Zbl 0175.48601)]. There are two types of irreducible symmetric spaces, while in general, such a compact symmetric space \((M,g)\) is of the form \(M=\Gamma\backslash(M_0\times M_1\times\dots \times M_q)\) with metric \(g\) induced by the metric \(G(g_0,c_1,\ldots,c_q)=g_0\times c_1g_1\times\ldots\times c_qg_q\) on the cover \(M_0\times M_1\times\ldots \times M_q\) where \(M_0\) is a compact torus with flat metric \(g_0\) and the other factors \(M_j,j=1,\dots,q\) are simply connected compact irreducible symmetric spaces with metric \(g_j\) induced from the Killing form and real positive constants \(c_j,j=1,\dots,q\); the space \(\Gamma\) is a discrete subgroup of the center of \(M_0\times M_1\times\ldots \times M_q\). Let \(\mathcal{R}_{\mathrm{sym}}(M)=\mathcal{S}^+(\mathrm{dim}M_0)\times \mathbb{R}_+^q\) be the space of symmetric metrics on \(M\) with \(\mathcal{S}^+(d)\) the space of positive real symmetric matrices of order \(d\). The main result of the paper states the existence of a residual set in \(\mathcal{R}_{\mathrm{sym}}(M)\) such that the compact symmetric space \((M,G(g_0,c_1,\dots,c_q))\) obeys the Poisson relation equality. Moreover the author gives a list of spaces for which the Poisson relation equality holds for any parameter \((g_0,c_1,\dots,c_q)\in\mathcal{R}_{\mathrm{sym}}(M)\), this list containing irreducible \(M\). As corollary, similar results are valid for compact spaces with bi-invariant metrics. The proof strategy relies on the wave invariants \((\mathrm{Wave}_k(\tau))_{k\in\mathbb{N}}\), which appear in the singularity expansion of the wave trace in the neighborhood of each geodesic period and which has been calculated by Duistermaat-Guillemin for clean manifolds. The classification of symmetric spaces and the structure of their root systems are heavily used to handle this calculations.

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