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The main goal of this paper is to give the first examples of equivariant aspherical Poincare complexes, that are not realized by group actions on closed aspherical manifolds $M$. These will also provide new counterexamples to the Nielsen…

A. Borel proved that, if a finite group $F$ acts effectively and continuously on a closed aspherical manifold $M$ with centerless fundamental group $\pi_1(M)$, then a natural homomorphism $\psi$ from $F$ to the outer automorphism group…

We consider the problem of whether, for a given virtually torsionfree discrete group $\Gamma$, there exists a cocompact proper topological $\Gamma$-manifold, which is equivariantly homotopy equivalent to the classifying space for proper…

We prove a result on equivariant deformations of flat bundles, and as a corollary, we obtain two ``splitting in a finite cover'' theorems for isometric group actions on Riemannian manifolds with infinite fundamental groups, where the…

There is the problem, whether for a given virtually torsionfree discrete group $\Gamma$ there exists a cocompact proper topological $\Gamma$-manifold, which is equivariantly homotopy equivalent to the classifying space for proper actions.…

We study isometric actions of Steinberg groups on Hadamard manifolds. We prove some rigidity properties related to these actions. In Particular we show that every isometric action of $St_n(F_p\langle t_1,\ldots ,t_k \rangle)$ on Hadamard…

In this article we study properly discontinuous actions on Hilbert manifolds giving new examples of complete Hilbert manifolds with nonnegative, respectively nonpositive, sectional curvature with infinite fundamental group. We also get…

We consider classification problems for manifolds and discrete subgroups of Lie groups from a descriptive set-theoretic point of view. This work is largely foundational in conception and character, recording both a framework for general…

We study the properly discontinuous and isometric actions on the unit sphere of infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces and we get some new examples of Hilbert manifold with costant positive sectional curvature. We prove some necessary…

Given a smooth, oriented, simply-connected $4$-manifold $M$, the homological Nielsen realization problem asks: when does a finite group of isometries $G\leq O(H_2(M;\mathbb{Z}))$ preserving the intersection form lift isomorphically to a…

This is a slightly altered version of the authors thesis from 2014. In the first main part we show that the quotient space of a compact, simply connected and nonnegatively curved Riemannian 4-manifold by an effective, isometric…

We show a geometric rigidity of isometric actions of non compact (semisimple) Lie groups on Lorentz manifolds. Namely, we show that the manifold has a warped product structure of a Lorentz manifold with constant curvature by a Riemannian…

We consider the action of a finite subgroup of the mapping class group $Mod(S)$ of an oriented compact surface $S$ of genus $g \geq 2$ on the moduli space $\mathcal{R}(S,G)$ of representations of $\pi_1(S)$ in a connected semisimple real…

For a locally finite connected graph $X$ we consider the group $Maps(X)$ of proper homotopy equivalences of $X$. We show that it has a natural Polish group topology, and we propose these groups as an analog of big mapping class groups. We…

These are the notes for a series of lectures at the Institute of Geometry and Topology of the University of Stuttgart, Germany, in July 13-15, 2022. We assume basic knowledge of isometric actions on Riemannian manifolds, including the…

By using a Borel density theorem for algebraic quotients, we prove a theorem concerning isometric actions of a Lie group $G$ on a smooth or analytic manifold $M$ with a rigid $\mathrm{A}$-structure $\sigma$. It generalizes Gromov's…

Using methods originating in the theory of intersection spaces, specifically a de Rham type description of the real cohomology of these spaces by a complex of global differential forms, we show that the Leray-Serre spectral sequence with…

We prove a criterion for an isometric action of a Lie group on a Riemannian manifold to be polar. From this criterion, it follows that an action with a fixed point is polar if and only if the slice representation at the fixed point is polar…

We prove that an isometric action of a Lie group on a Riemannian manifold admits a resolution preserving the transverse geometry if and only if the action is infinitesimally polar. We provide applications concerning topological simplicity…

Symmetry plays a basic role in variational problems (settled e.g. in $\mathbb R^{n}$ or in a more general manifold), for example to deal with the lack of compactness which naturally appear when the problem is invariant under the action of a…