Benjamini--Schramm convergence of arithmetic locally symmetric spaces
We prove that the thin parts of arithmetically defined locally symmetric space take up a negligible part of their volume and deduce asymptotic results on their Betti numbers.
arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Jean Raimbault.
We prove that the thin parts of arithmetically defined locally symmetric space take up a negligible part of their volume and deduce asymptotic results on their Betti numbers.
We prove that the Fuchsian (4,4,4) triangle group and also right-angled reflection groups of hyperbolic spaces in higher dimensions admit ergodic invariant random subgroups having uncountably many isomorphism types of subgroups in their support (in most cases we actually prove a stronger statement), providing an answer to a question of S. Thomas. We also give similar constructions in higher-dimensional spaces. Our constructions are based on Coxeter polytopes in hyperbolic spaces. We also provide examples of invariant random subgroups related to questions of Y. Glasner and A. Hase through a similar construction.
We prove that certain families of compact Coxeter polyhedra in 4- and 5-dimensional hyperbolic space constructed by Makarov give rise to infinitely many commensurability classes of reflection groups in these dimensions.
We observe that a large part of the volume of a hyperbolic polyhedron is taken by a tubular neighbourhood of its boundary, and use this to give a new proof for the finiteness of arithmetic maximal reflection groups following a recent work with M. Fraczyk and S. Hurtado. We also study in more depth the case of polygons in the hyperbolic plane.
We prove that any arithmetic locally symmetric space is homotopy equivalent to a simplicial complex where the number of simplices is bounded linearly in the volume of the space. This settles a well-known conjecture of Gelander. The main technical ingredient, which is of independent interest, is a strengthened version of the Margulis' collar lemma for arithmetic locally symmetric spaces based on the height gap theorem of Breuillard, in which the Margulis constant is made linear in the degree of the trace field of the lattice.
We study compact three-manifolds with boundary obtained by randomly gluing together truncated tetrahedra along their faces. We prove that, asymptotically almost surely as the number of tetrahedra tends to infinity, these manifolds are connected and have a single boundary component. We prove a law of large numbers for the genus of this boundary component, we show that the Heegaard genus of these manifolds is linear in the number of tetrahedra and we bound their first Betti number. We also show that, asymptotically almost surely as the number of tetrahedra tends to infinity, our manifolds admit a unique hyperbolic metric with totally geodesic boundary. We prove a law of large numbers for the volume of this metric, prove that the associated Laplacian has a uniform spectral gap and show that the diameter of our manifolds is logarithmic as a function of their volume. Finally, we determine the Benjamini--Schramm limit of our sequence of random manifolds.
We define a twisted $L^2$-torsion on the character variety of 3-manifold $M$ and study some of its properties. In the case where $M$ is hyperbolic of finite volume, we prove that the $L^2$-torsion is a real analytic function on a neighborhood of any lift of the holonomy representation.
Every closed orientable surface S has the following property: any two connected covers of S of the same degree are homeomorphic (as spaces). In this, paper we give a complete classification of compact 3-manifolds with empty or toroidal boundary which have the above property. We also discuss related group-theoretic questions.
We prove that the sign of the Euler characteristic of arithmetic groups with CSP is determined by the profinite completion. In contrast, we construct examples showing that this is not true for the Euler characteristic itself and that the sign of the Euler characteristic is not profinite among general residually finite groups of type $F$. Our methods imply similar results for $\ell^2$-torsion as well as a strong profiniteness statement for Novikov-Shubin invariants.
We determine the asymptotic number of index $n$ subgroups in virtually cyclic right-angled Coxeter groups and their free products as $n\to\infty$.
We show that asymptotically the first Betti number, or the arithmetic genus, of a Shimura curve satisfies the Gauss--Bonnet equality. We also show that the first Betti number of a congruence hyperbolic 3--orbifold asymptotically vanishes relatively to hyperbolic volume.
We determine the factorial growth rate of the number of finite index subgroups of right-angled Artin groups as a function of the index. This turns out to depend solely on the independence number of the defining graph. We also make a conjecture for right-angled Coxeter groups and prove that it holds in a limited setting.
We prove that for certain sequences of hyperbolic three--manifolds with cusps which converge to hyperbolic three--space in a weak ("Benjamini-Schramm") sense and certain coefficient systems the regularized analytic torsion approximates the $L^2$-torsion of the universal cover under an additional hypothesis. We also prove an asymptotic equality between the former and some Reidemeister torsion of the truncated manifolds.
Starting from the results in math.DG:1212.3161 we prove that for a given Bianchi group, certain natural coefficent modules and a lot of sequences of congruence subgroups of the size of the torsion subgroup of the first homology grows exponentially with the index (we give an explicit rate). We also prove limit multiplicity results for the irreducible components of the space of cuspidal forms.
We discuss the geometry of some arithmetic orbifolds locally isometric to a product of real hyperbolic spaces of dimension two and three, and prove that certain sequences of non-uniform orbifolds are convergent to this space in a geometric ("Benjamini--Schramm") sense for hyperbolic three--space and a product of hyperbolic planes. We also deal with arbitrary sequences of maximal arithmetic three--dimensional hyperbolic lattices defined over a quadratic or cubic field. A motivating application is the study of Betti numbers of Bianchi groups.
We study the asymptotic behaviour of Betti numbers, twisted torsion and other spectral invariants of sequences of locally symmetric spaces. Our main results are uniform versions of the DeGeorge--Wallach Theorem, of a theorem of Delorme and various other limit multiplicity theorems. A basic idea is to adapt the notion of Benjamini--Schramm convergence (BS-convergence), originally introduced for sequences of finite graphs of bounded degree, to sequences of Riemannian manifolds, and analyze the possible limits. We show that BS-convergence of locally symmetric spaces implies convergence, in an appropriate sense, of the associated normalized relative Plancherel measures. This then yields convergence of normalized multiplicities of unitary representations, Betti numbers and other spectral invariants. On the other hand, when the corresponding Lie group $G$ is simple and of real rank at least two, we prove that there is only one possible BS-limit, i.e. when the volume tends to infinity, locally symmetric spaces always BS-converge to their universal cover $G/K$. This leads to various general uniform results. When restricting to arbitrary sequences of congruence covers of a fixed arithmetic manifold we prove a strong quantitative version of BS-convergence which in turn implies upper estimates on the rate of convergence of normalized Betti numbers in the spirit of Sarnak--Xue. An important role in our approach is played by the notion of Invariant Random Subgroups. For higher rank simple Lie groups $G$, we exploit rigidity theory, and in particular the Nevo--Stück--Zimmer theorem and Kazhdan's property (T), to obtain a complete understanding of the space of IRSs of $G$.
In the first paper of this series (arxiv.org/abs/1210.2961) we studied the asymptotic behavior of Betti numbers, twisted torsion and other spectral invariants for sequences of lattices in Lie groups G. A key element of our work was the study of invariant random subgroups (IRSs) of G. Any sequence of lattices has a subsequence converging to an IRS, and when G has higher rank, the Nevo-Stuck-Zimmer theorem classifies all IRSs of G. Using the classification, one can deduce asymptotic statments about spectral invariants of lattices. When G has real rank one, the space of IRSs is more complicated. We construct here several uncountable families of IRSs in the groups SO(n,1). We give dimension-specific constructions when n=2,3, and also describe a general gluing construction that works for every n at least 2. Part of the latter construction is inspired by Gromov and Piatetski-Shapiro's construction of non-arithmetic lattices in SO(n,1).
We study the ends of a generic manifold, with respect to a unimodular measure on the space of pointed Riemannian manifolds with bounded curvatures. We apply our general result to the case of surfaces and obtain as corollaries a very precise description of generic leaves for foliations with invariant measures and of quotients of the hyperbolic plane by invariant random subgroups of the isometry group.