scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2079137

Ergodic theory on groups (22D40) General groups of measure-preserving transformations (28D15) Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to dynamical systems and ergodic theory (37-02) General groups of measure-preserving transformations and dynamical systems (37A15) Dynamics induced by group actions other than (mathbb{Z}) and (mathbb{R}), and (mathbb{C}) (37C85)

Review text

This very well written survey paper gives an account on classification and rigidity results for measure preserving actions of locally compact second countable groups on a standard Borel space equipped with a probability measure. The main interest lies in actions of nonamenable groups or, put differently, groups which are sufficiently complicated to allow for rigidity phenomena. The most important class of examples of such groups are semi-simple Lie groups without compact factor, finite center and of rank at least \(2\) and their irreducible lattices. The paper includes a careful presentation of all necessary more advanced background material as well as a discussion of fairly recent results and their significance. Chapter \(1\) is of introductory nature. Besides a general outline of the paper, it contains some basic results on Lie groups, Lie algebras, lattices and arithmetic subgroups of \(\mathbb Q\)-algebraic groups. Chapter \(2\) collects standard results on measurable actions of a second countable locally compact group \(G\). Among the topics adressed are ergodic measure class preserving actions and the ergodic decomposition for an arbitrary measure class preserving action. Tame actions or a particularly nice class of continuous actions including algebraic actions. Cocycles can be used to describe large classes of actions on compact manifolds or actions by automorphisms of principal bundles. The Mackey range of a cocycle and the algebraic hull of a cocycle with values in an algebraic group are introduced. The last section of the chapter discusses the important concept of amenable groups and amenable actions. Chapter \(3\) is devoted to an explanation of the relation between measure class preserving actions and unitary representations of a group \(G\). Kazhdan's property \(T\) is introduced which defines a property of the group in terms properties of its unitary representations. The chapter also explains the ergodicity theorem of Howe-Moore. Chapter \(4\) presents the most important examples of measurable actions: Homogeneous actions, affine actions, isometric actions and suspensions. All these actions admit some invariant additional structure which can be called ``geometric. This leads to the discussion of smooth actions preserving some ``rigid geometric structure (e. g., a connection or a pseudo-Riemannian metric) in Chapter \(5\). A rather rich class of examples are automorphism groups of Lorentz-manifolds which were investigated by \textit{S. Adams} and \textit{G. Stuck} [Invent. Math. 129, 239--261 (1997; Zbl 0897.53046) and ibid., 263--287 (1997; Zbl 0897.53047)] and \textit{A. Zeghib} [Duke Math. J. 92, 321--333 (1998; Zbl 0976.53077)]. The chapter also explains some results of Zimmer related to his celebrated superrigidity theorem for cocycles. The superrigidity theorem for cocycles as well as other results of R. J. Zimmer relevant for his program of understanding continuous actions of higher rank Lie groups are contained in Chapter \(6\). There is also a topological counterpart of the superrigidity theorem due to \textit{R. Feres} and \textit{F. Labourie} [Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér., IV. Sér. 31, 599--629 (1998; Zbl 0915.58072)]. In addition, recent results of \textit{A. Furman} [Ann. Math. (2) 150, 1083--1108 (1999; Zbl 0943.22012)] on rigidity of orbit equivalences are presented as well as a version of the celebrated theorem of Ratner. The paper contains an extensive list of references and gives very detailed informations on where to locate the proofs of those results which are only quoted in the paper. It also contains some proofs illustrating the relevant techniques as well as some examples. Overall, the paper provides a very valuable service to the mathematical community and makes a rich, interesting and difficult subfield of mathematics more accessible to nonexperts and graduate students. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1013.00016].

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