Publications of SPP2026
On this site you find preprints and publications produced within the projects and with the support of the DFG priority programme „Geometry at Infinity“.
We prove that there exist ????????(3)-invariant metrics on Aloff-Wallach spaces W^7_{k1,k2}, as well as ????????(5)-invariant metrics on the Berger space B^{13}, which have positive sectional curvature and evolve under the Ricci flow to metrics with non-positively curved planes.
Related project(s):
79Alexandrov geometry in the light of symmetry and topology
By constructing a non-empty domain of discontinuity in a suitable homogeneous space, we prove that every torsion-free projective Anosov subgroup is the monodromy group of a locally homogeneous contact Axiom A dynamical system with a unique basic hyperbolic set on which the flow is conjugate to the refraction flow of Sambarino. Under the assumption of irreducibility, we utilize the work of Stoyanov to establish spectral estimates for the associated complex Ruelle transfer operators, and by way of corollary: exponential mixing, exponentially decaying error term in the prime orbit theorem, and a spectral gap for the Ruelle zeta function. With no irreducibility assumption, results of Dyatlov-Guillarmou imply the global meromorphic continuation of zeta functions with smooth weights, as well as the existence of a discrete spectrum of Ruelle-Pollicott resonances and (co)-resonant states. We apply our results to space-like geodesic flows for the convex cocompact pseudo-Riemannian manifolds of Danciger-Guéritaud-Kassel, and the Benoist-Hilbert geodesic flow for strictly convex real projective manifolds.
Related project(s):
65Resonances for non-compact locally symmetric spaces
For negatively curved symmetric spaces it is known that the poles of the scattering matrices defined via the standard intertwining operators for the spherical principal representations of the isometry group are either given as poles of the intertwining operators or as quantum resonances, i.e. poles of the meromorphically continued resolvents of the Laplace-Beltrami operator. We extend this result to classical locally symmetric spaces of negative curvature with convex-cocompact fundamental group using results of Bunke and Olbrich. The method of proof forces us to exclude the spectral parameters corresponding to singular Poisson transforms.
Related project(s):
65Resonances for non-compact locally symmetric spaces
We present how to collapse a manifold equipped with a closed flat regular Riemannian foliation with leaves of positive dimension on a compact manifold, while keeping the sectional curvature uniformly bounded from above and below. From this deformation, we show that a closed flat regular Riemannian foliation with leaves of positive dimension on a compact simply-connected manifold is given by torus actions. This gives a geometric characterization of aspherical regular Riemannian foliations given by torus actions.
Related project(s):
43Singular Riemannian foliations and collapse
The fine curve graph was introduced as a geometric tool to study the homeomorphisms of surfaces. In this paper we study the Gromov boundary of this space and the local topology near points associated with minimal measurable foliations. We then give several applications including finding explicit elements with positive stable commutator length, and proving a Tits alternative for subgroups of the homemorphism group of a closed surface containing a pseudo-Anosov map, generalizing a result of Hurtado-Xue.
Related project(s):
38Geometry of surface homeomorphism groups
In the framework of infinite ergodic theory, we derive equidistribution results for suitable weighted sequences of cusp points of Hecke triangle groups encoded by group elements of constant word length with respect to a set of natural generators. This is a generalization of the corresponding results for the modular group, for which we rely on advanced results from infinite ergodic theory and transfer operator techniques developed for AFN-maps.
Related project(s):
70Spectral theory with non-unitary twists
We consider first-order elliptic differential operators acting on vector bundles over smooth manifolds with smooth boundary, which is permitted to be noncompact. Under very mild assumptions, we obtain a regularity theory for sections in the maximal domain. Under additional geometric assumptions, and assumptions on an adapted boundary operator, we obtain a trace theorem on the maximal domain. This allows us to systematically study both local and nonlocal boundary conditions. In particular, the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer boundary condition occurs as a special case. Furthermore, we study contexts which induce semi-Fredholm and Fredholm extensions.
Related project(s):
37Boundary value problems and index theory on Riemannian and Lorentzian manifolds
Every finite collection of oriented closed geodesics in the modular surface has a canonically associated link in its unit tangent bundle coming from the periodic orbits of the geodesic flow. We study the volume of the associated link complement with respect to its unique complete hyperbolic metric. We provide the first lower volume bound that is linear in terms of the number of distinct exponents in the code words corresponding to the collection of closed geodesics.
Related project(s):
38Geometry of surface homeomorphism groups
We show that Ricci flow does not preserve a range of curvature conditions that interpolate between positive sectional and positive scalar curvature.
Related project(s):
79Alexandrov geometry in the light of symmetry and topology
We prove an analogue of Kostant's convexity theorem for split real and complex Kac-Moody groups associated to free and cofree root data. The result can be seen as a first step towards describing the multiplication map in a Kac-Moody group in terms of Iwasawa coordinates. Our method involves a detailed analysis of the geometry of Weyl group orbits in the Cartan subalgebra of a real Kac-Moody algebra. It provides an alternative proof of Kostant convexity for semisimple Lie groups and also generalizes a linear analogue of Kostant's theorem for Kac-Moody algebras that has been established by Kac and Peterson in 1984.
Related project(s):
61At infinity of symmetric spaces
A singular foliation \(\mathcal{F}\) on a complete Riemannian manifold \(M\) is called Singular Riemannian foliation (SRF for short) if its leaves are locally equidistant, e.g., the partition of M into orbits of an isometric action. In this paper, we investigate variational problems in compact Riemannian manifolds equipped with SRF with special properties, e.g. isoparametric foliations, SRF on fibers bundles with Sasaki metric, and orbit-like foliations. More precisely, we prove two results analogous to Palais' Principle of Symmetric Criticality, one is a general principle for \(\mathcal{F}\) symmetric operators on the Hilbert space \(W^{1,2}(M)\), the other one is for \(\mathcal{F}\) symmetric integral operators on the Banach spaces \(W^{1,p}(M)\). These results together with a \(\mathcal{F}\) version of Rellich Kondrachov Hebey Vaugon Embedding Theorem allow us to circumvent difficulties with Sobolev's critical exponents when considering applications of Calculus of Variations to find solutions to PDEs. To exemplify this we prove the existence of weak solutions to a class of variational problems which includes \(p\)-Kirschoff problems.
Related project(s):
43Singular Riemannian foliations and collapse
We study obstructions to the existence of Riemannian metrics of positive scalar curvature on closed smooth manifolds arising from torsion classes in the integral homology of their fundamental groups. As an application, we construct new examples of manifolds which do not admit positive scalar curvature metrics, but whose Cartesian products admit such metrics.
Related project(s):
52Spaces and Moduli Spaces of Riemannian Metrics with Curvature Bounds on compact and non-compact Manifolds II
We consider a geodesic billiard system consisting of a complete Riemannian manifold and an obstacle submanifold with boundary at which the trajectories of the geodesic flow experience specular reflections. We show that if the geodesic billiard system is hyperbolic on its trapped set and the latter is compact and non-grazing the techniques for open hyperbolic systems developed by Dyatlov and Guillarmou can be applied to a smooth model for the discontinuous flow defined by the non-grazing billiard trajectories. This allows us to obtain a meromorphic resolvent for the generator of the billiard flow. As an application we prove a meromorphic continuation of weighted zeta functions together with explicit residue formulae. In particular, our results apply to scattering by convex obstacles in the Euclidean plane.
Journal | Ann. Henri Poincaré |
Publisher | Springer |
Link to preprint version | |
Link to published version |
Related project(s):
65Resonances for non-compact locally symmetric spaces
We use the language of proper CAT(-1) spaces to study thick, locally compact trees, the real, complex and quaternionic hyperbolic spaces and the hyperbolic plane over the octonions. These are rank 1 Euclidean buildings, respectively rank 1 symmetric spaces of non-compact type. We give a uniform proof that these spaces may be reconstructed using the cross ratio on their visual boundary, bringing together the work of Tits and Bourdon.
Related project(s):
62A unified approach to Euclidean buildings and symmetric spaces of noncompact type
Reidemeister numbers of group automorphisms encode the number of twisted conjugacy classes of groups and might yield information about self-maps of spaces related to the given objects. Here we address a question posed by Gonçalves and Wong in the mid 2000s: we construct an infinite series of compact connected solvmanifolds (that are not nilmanifolds) of strictly increasing dimensions and all of whose self-homotopy equivalences have vanishing Nielsen number. To this end, we establish a sufficient condition for a prominent (infinite) family of soluble linear groups to have the so-called property R∞. In particular, we generalize or complement earlier results due to Dekimpe, Gonçalves, Kochloukova, Nasybullov, Taback, Tertooy, Van den Bussche, and Wong, showing that many soluble S-arithmetic groups have R∞ and suggesting a conjecture in this direction.
Related project(s):
62A unified approach to Euclidean buildings and symmetric spaces of noncompact type
In this paper we introduce the galaxy of Coxeter groups -- an infinite dimensional, locally finite, ranked simplicial complex which captures isomorphisms between Coxeter systems. In doing so, we would like to suggest a new framework to study the isomorphism problem for Coxeter groups. We prove some structural results about this space, provide a full characterization in small ranks and propose many questions. In addition we survey known tools, results and conjectures. Along the way we show profinite rigidity of triangle Coxeter groups -- a result which is possibly of independent interest.
Journal | Journal of Algebra |
Link to preprint version |
Related project(s):
62A unified approach to Euclidean buildings and symmetric spaces of noncompact type
We show that if one of various cycle types occurs in the permutation action of a finite group on the cosets of a given subgroup, then every almost conjugate subgroup is conjugate. As a number theoretic application, corresponding decomposition types of primes effect that a number field is determined by the Dedekind zeta function. As a geometric application, coverings of Riemannian manifolds with certain geodesic lifting behaviors must be isometric.
Related project(s):
58Profinite perspectives on l2-cohomology
We extend the K-cowaist inequality to generalized Dirac operators in the sense of Gromov and Lawson and study applications to manifolds with boundary.
Related project(s):
37Boundary value problems and index theory on Riemannian and Lorentzian manifolds52Spaces and Moduli Spaces of Riemannian Metrics with Curvature Bounds on compact and non-compact Manifolds II
Kac-Moody symmetric spaces have been introduced by Freyn, Hartnick, Horn and the first-named author for centered Kac-Moody groups, that is, Kac-Moody groups that are generated by their root subgroups. In the case of non-invertible generalized Cartan matrices this leads to complications that -- within the approach proposed originally -- cannot be repaired in the affine case. In the present article we propose an alternative approach to Kac-Moody symmetric spaces which for invertible generalized Cartan matrices provides exactly the same concept, which for the non-affine non-invertible case provides alternative Kac-Moody symmetric spaces, and which finally provides Kac-Moody symmetric spaces for affine Kac-Moody groups. In a nutshell, the original intention by Freyn, Hartnick, Horn and Köhl was to construct symmetric spaces that likely lead to primitive actions of the Kac-Moody groups; this, of course, cannot work in the affine case as affine Kac-Moody groups are far from simple.
Related project(s):
61At infinity of symmetric spaces
We determine the fundamental groups of symmetrizable algebraically simply connected split real Kac-Moody groups endowed with the Kac-Peterson topology. In analogy to the finite-dimensional situation, the Iwasawa decomposition G=KAU provides a weak homotopy equivalence between K and G, implying π1(G)=π1(K). It thus suffices to determine π1(K) which we achieve by investigating the fundamental groups of generalized flag varieties. Our results apply in all cases in which the Bruhat decomposition of the generalized flag variety is a CW decomposition − in particular, we cover the complete symmetrizable situation; the result concerning the structure of π1(K) more generally also holds in the non-symmetrizable two-spherical situation.
Journal | Transformation Groups |
Volume | 28 |
Pages | 769–802 |
Link to preprint version | |
Link to published version |
Related project(s):
61At infinity of symmetric spaces