First cohomology of Anosov actions of higher rank abelian groups and applications to rigidity (Q1343735)

The authors define and study Anosov actions of \(\mathbb{Z}^ k\) and \(\mathbb{R}^ k\), \(k\geq 2\). They present several examples of such actions different from these obtained as the products or other obvious constructions. These examples exhibit a remarkable array of rigidity properties, markedly different from the rank one situation. The authors find that at the heart of these phenomena lies a drastically different behaviour of the first cohomology. In particular, they show that in all known examples (called standard actions) satisfying suitable irreducibility assumptions, the first smooth, or Hölder cohomology with coefficients in \(\mathbb{R}^ n\) trivializes. As a consequence: (1) all time changes of standard actions come from automorphisms of \(\mathbb{Z}^ k\) or \(\mathbb{R}^ k\), (2) any \(C^ 1\)-perturbation of a standard action preserves a smooth measure and is Hölder-conjugate to the original action, up to an automorphism of \(\mathbb{R}^ k\). The paper is to be the first in a series of papers exploring rigidity properties of hyperbolic actions of \(\mathbb{Z}^ k\) or \(\mathbb{R}^ k\).