English

The variety of group actions on all algebraic real hyperbolic spaces

Metric Geometry 2026-03-05 v1 Algebraic Topology Group Theory Representation Theory

Abstract

For a cardinal κ\kappa, denote by Hκ\mathbf{H}^\kappa the algebraic real hyperbolic space of dimension κ\kappa. For a topological group Γ\Gamma, we study the set of continuous representations ΓIsom(Hκ)\Gamma \to \operatorname{Isom}(\mathbf{H}^\kappa) up to continuous self-representations Isom(Hκ)Isom(Hκ)\operatorname{Isom}(\mathbf{H}^\kappa)\to \operatorname{Isom}(\mathbf{H}^\kappa). The novelty of this work relies in considering simultaneously all cardinals, finite or infinite. We will endow this set of classes of representations with a natural topology, and show that this character variety is compact. This will also enable us to recover all previous compactifications of actions on Hn\mathbf{H}^n by certain actions on real trees for the equivariant Gromov-Hausdorff topology. A class of representations recovers in particular the homothety class of its marked length spectrum. We will define the notion of algebraic cross-ratio and prove a GNS-embedding result, enabling us to generalize some rigidity properties of the marked length spectrum. We will also introduce a notion of abstract cross-ratio, and use it to show that a wide class of groups Γ\Gamma (characterized by the existence of what we call a 33-full action on a CAT(1)\operatorname{CAT}(-1)-space) admit at most one class of irreducible representations into Isom(Hκ)\operatorname{Isom}(\mathbf{H}^\kappa) whose boundedness properties are controlled by those of (X,d)(X,d). We will apply this to topological groups Γ\Gamma such as the isometry group Isom(Hκ)\operatorname{Isom}(\mathbf{H}^\kappa) itself, the automorphism group Aut(Tω)\operatorname{Aut}(T_\omega) of the simplicial tree with countably infinite valency, and the automorphism group PGL2(K,)\operatorname{PGL}_2(\mathbb{K}, \lvert\cdot \rvert) of the projective line over a non-Archimedean field.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.03863,
  title  = {The variety of group actions on all algebraic real hyperbolic spaces},
  author = {Bruno Duchesne and Christopher-Lloyd Simon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.03863},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

73 pages, 2 figures. Keywords: strong hyperbolicity, $\operatorname{CAT}(-1)$-space, Ptolemaic metric, cross-ratio, kernel of hyperbolic type, M\"obius group, exotic representations, character variety, marked length spectrum, cross-ratio, rigidity, Polish group, Gromov-Hausdorff convergence