Related papers: Infra-Solvmanifolds and Rigidity of Subgroups in S…

This self-contained paper is part of a series \cite{FF2,FF3} on actions by diffeomorphisms of infinite groups on compact manifolds. The two main results presented here are: 1) Any homomorphism of (almost any) mapping class group or…

We classify four-dimensional compact solvmanifolds up to diffeomorphism, while determining which of them have complex analytic structures. In particular, we shall see that a four-dimensional compact solvmanifold S can be written, up to…

We prove that the variety of complete flags for any semisimple algebraic group is rigid in any smooth family of Fano manifolds.

For each nonnegative integer m we show that any closed, oriented topological four-manifold with fundamental group Z_{4m+2} and odd intersection form, with possibly seven exceptions, either admits no smooth structure or admits infinitely…

We show that the topological full group of a Hausdorff ample groupoid with compact unit space coincides with the group of homotopy classes of invertible isometries in pseudofunction algebras associated with the groupoid. Moreover, if the…

Given a closed, smooth 4-manifold $X$ and self-diffeomorphism $f$ that is topologically pseudo-isotopic to the identity, we study the question of whether $f$ is moreover smoothly pseudo-isotopic to the identity. If the fundamental group of…

We define the class of high dimensional graph manifolds. These are compact smooth manifolds supporting a decomposition into finitely many pieces, each of which is diffeomorphic to the product of a torus with a finite volume hyperbolic…

We study the rational homotopy types of classifying spaces of automorphism groups of smooth simply connected manifolds of dimension at least five. We give dg Lie algebra models for the homotopy automorphisms and the block diffeomorphisms of…

We show that the group cohomology of torsion-free virtually polycyclic groups and the continuous cohomology of simply connected solvable Lie groups can be computed by the rational cohomology of algebraic groups. Our results are…

We construct a smooth rational affine surface S with finite automorphism group but with the property that the group of automorphisms of the cylinder SxA^2 acts infinitely transitively on the complement of a closed subset of codimension at…

We answer affirmatively a question posed by Morita on homological stability of surface diffeomorphisms made discrete. In particular, we prove that $C^{\infty}$-diffeomorphisms and volume preserving diffeomorphisms of surfaces as family of…

We give a characterization of flat affine connections on manifolds by means of a natural affine representation of the universal covering of the Lie group of diffeomorphisms preserving the connection. From the infinitesimal point of view,…

We prove that, given a torsion-free relatively hyperbolic group G with non-relatively-hyperbolic peripherals, isomorphic finite index subgroups of G have the same index. This applies for instance to fundamental groups of finite-volume…

We classify solvable Lie groups admitting left invariant symplectic half-flat structure. When the Lie group has a compact quotient by a lattice, we show that these structures provide solutions of supersymmetric equations of type IIA.

We discuss our recent results on the existence and classification problem of complex and Kaehler structures on compact solvmanifolds. In particular, we determine in this paper all the complex surfaces which are diffeomorphic to compact…

For a compact contact manifold it is shown that the anisotropic Folland-Stein function spaces form an algebra. The notion of anisotropic regularity is extended to define the space of Folland-Stein contact diffeomorphisms, which is shown to…

We consider the Lie group of smooth diffeomorphisms Diff$(M)$ of a simple polytope $M$ in the euclidean space. Simple polytopes are special cases of manifolds with corners. The geometric setting allows to study in particular, the subgroup…

We prove that if a finite group $G$ acts smoothly on a manifold $M$ so that all the isotropy subgroups are abelian groups with rank $\leq k$, then $G$ acts freely and smoothly on $M \times \bbS^{n_1} \times...\times \bbS^{n_k}$ for some…

For a compact convex subset K with non-empty interior in a finite-dimensional vector space, let G be the group of all smooth diffeomorphisms of K which fix the boundary of K pointwise. We show that G is a C^0-regular infinite-dimensional…

Two 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic if they become diffeomorphic after connected sum with S^2 x S^2's. This paper shows that two closed, orientable, homotopy equivalent, smooth 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic, provided a certain…