The famous Cheng-Shen’s conjecture in Riemann-Finsler geometry claims that every n-dimensional closed W-quadratic Randers manifold is a Berwald manifold. In this paper, first we study the Riemann and Ricci curvatures of homogeneous Finsler manifolds and obtain some rigidity theorems. Then, by using this investigation, we construct a family of W-quadratic Randers metrics which are not R-quadratic nor strongly Ricci-quadratic.

Let $ G $ be a connected semisimple real algebraic group and $\Gamma <G$ be a Zariski dense discrete subgroup. Let N denote a maximal horospherical subgroup of G, and $P=MAN$ the minimal parabolic subgroup which is the normalizer of N. Let $\mathcal E$ denote the unique P-minimal subset of $\Gamma \backslash G$ and let $\mathcal E_0$ be a $P^\circ $-minimal subset. We consider a notion of a horospherical limit point in the Furstenberg boundary $ G/P $ and show that the following are equivalent for any $[g]\in \mathcal E_0$:

1. (1) $gP\in G/P$ is a horospherical limit point;

2. (2) $[g]NM$ is dense in $\mathcal E$;

3. (3) $[g]N$ is dense in $\mathcal E_0$.

The equivalence of items (1) and (2) is due to Dal’bo in the rank one case. We also show that unlike convex cocompact groups of rank one Lie groups, the $NM$-minimality of $\mathcal E$ does not hold in a general Anosov homogeneous space.

We establish higher moment formulae for Siegel transforms on the space of affine unimodular lattices as well as on certain congruence quotients of $\mathrm {SL}_d({\mathbb {R}})$. As applications, we prove functional central limit theorems for lattice point counting for affine and congruence lattices using the method of moments.

We study the equidistribution of orbits of the form $b_1^{a_1(n)}\cdots b_k^{a_k(n)}\Gamma $ in a nilmanifold X, where the sequences $a_i(n)$ arise from smooth functions of polynomial growth belonging to a Hardy field. We show that under certain assumptions on the growth rates of the functions $a_1,\ldots ,a_k$, these orbits are equidistributed on some subnilmanifold of the space X. As an application of these results and in combination with the Host–Kra structure theorem for measure-preserving systems, as well as some recent seminorm estimates of the author for ergodic averages concerning Hardy field functions, we deduce a norm convergence result for multiple ergodic averages. Our method mainly relies on an equidistribution result of Green and Tao on finite segments of polynomial orbits on a nilmanifold [The quantitative behaviour of polynomial orbits on nilmanifolds. Ann. of Math. (2) 175 (2012), 465–540].

Let G be a real Lie group, $\Lambda <G$ a lattice and $H\leqslant G$ a connected semisimple subgroup without compact factors and with finite center. We define the notion of H-expanding measures $\mu $ on H and, applying recent work of Eskin–Lindenstrauss, prove that $\mu $-stationary probability measures on $G/\Lambda $ are homogeneous. Transferring a construction by Benoist–Quint and drawing on ideas of Eskin–Mirzakhani–Mohammadi, we construct Lyapunov/Margulis functions to show that H-expanding random walks on $G/\Lambda $ satisfy a recurrence condition and that homogeneous subspaces are repelling. Combined with a countability result, this allows us to prove equidistribution of trajectories in $G/\Lambda $ for H-expanding random walks and to obtain orbit closure descriptions. Finally, elaborating on an idea of Simmons–Weiss, we deduce Birkhoff genericity of a class of measures with respect to some diagonal flows and extend their applications to Diophantine approximation on similarity fractals to a nonconformal and weighted setting.

Let $S=\{p_1, \ldots , p_r,\infty \}$ for prime integers $p_1, \ldots , p_r.$ Let X be an S-adic compact nilmanifold, equipped with the unique translation-invariant probability measure $\mu .$ We characterize the countable groups $\Gamma $ of automorphisms of X for which the Koopman representation $\kappa $ on $L^2(X,\mu )$ has a spectral gap. More specifically, let Y be the maximal quotient solenoid of X (thus, Y is a finite-dimensional, connected, compact abelian group). We show that $\kappa $ does not have a spectral gap if and only if there exists a $\Gamma $-invariant proper subsolenoid of Y on which $\Gamma $ acts as a virtually abelian group,

Let G be a complex semisimple Lie group and H a complex closed connected subgroup. Let and be their Lie algebras. We prove that the regular representation of G in $L^2(G/H)$ is tempered if and only if the orthogonal of in contains regular elements by showing simultaneously the equivalence to other striking conditions, such as has a solvable limit algebra.

We prove that if a closed hyperbolic $3$ -manifold M contains infinitely many totally geodesic surfaces, then M is arithmetic.

Suppose G is an amenable locally compact group with lattice subgroup $\Gamma $ . Grosvenor [‘A relation between invariant means on Lie groups and invariant means on their discrete subgroups’, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc.288(2) (1985), 813–825] showed that there is a natural affine injection $\iota : {\text {LIM}}(\Gamma )\to {\text {TLIM}}(G)$ and that $\iota $ is a surjection essentially in the case $G={\mathbb R}^d$ , $\Gamma ={\mathbb Z}^d$ . In the present paper it is shown that $\iota $ is a surjection if and only if $G/\Gamma $ is compact.

Let ${\mathbf {G}}$ be a semisimple algebraic group over a number field K, $\mathcal {S}$ a finite set of places of K, $K_{\mathcal {S}}$ the direct product of the completions $K_{v}, v \in \mathcal {S}$ , and ${\mathcal O}$ the ring of $\mathcal {S}$ -integers of K. Let $G = {\mathbf {G}}(K_{\mathcal {S}})$ , $\Gamma = {\mathbf {G}}({\mathcal O})$ and $\pi :G \rightarrow G/\Gamma $ the quotient map. We describe the closures of the locally divergent orbits ${T\pi (g)}$ where T is a maximal $K_{\mathcal {S}}$ -split torus in G. If $\# S = 2$ then the closure $ \overline{T\pi (g)}$ is a finite union of T-orbits stratified in terms of parabolic subgroups of ${\mathbf {G}} \times {\mathbf {G}}$ and, consequently, $\overline{T\pi (g)}$ is homogeneous (i.e. $\overline{T\pi (g)}= H\pi (g)$ for a subgroup H of G) if and only if ${T\pi (g)}$ is closed. On the other hand, if $\# \mathcal {S}> 2$ and K is not a $\mathrm {CM}$ -field then $\overline {T\pi (g)}$ is homogeneous for ${\mathbf {G}} = \mathbf {SL}_{n}$ and, generally, non-homogeneous but squeezed between closed orbits of two reductive subgroups of equal semisimple K-ranks for ${\mathbf {G}} \neq \mathbf {SL}_{n}$ . As an application, we prove that $\overline {f({\mathcal O}^{n})} = K_{\mathcal {S}}$ for the class of non-rational locally K-decomposable homogeneous forms $f \in K_{\mathcal {S}}[x_1, \ldots , x_{n}]$ .

We consider autocorrelation functions for supersymmetric quantum mechanical systems (consisting of a fermion and a boson) confined in trigonometric Pöschl–Teller partner potentials. We study the limit of rescaled autocorrelation functions (at random time) as the localization of the initial state goes to infinity. The limiting distribution can be described using pairs of Jacobi theta functions on a suitably defined homogeneous space, as a corollary of the work of Cellarosi and Marklof. A construction by Contreras-Astorga and Fernández provides large classes of Pöschl-Teller partner potentials to which our analysis applies.

We prove several general conditional convergence results on ergodic averages for horocycle and geodesic subgroups of any continuous $\operatorname {SL}(2, \mathbb {R})$ -action on a locally compact space. These results are motivated by theorems of Eskin, Mirzakhani and Mohammadi on the $\operatorname {SL}(2, \mathbb {R})$ -action on the moduli space of Abelian differentials. By our argument we can derive from these theorems an improved version of the ‘weak convergence’ of push-forwards of horocycle measures under the geodesic flow and a short proof of weaker versions of theorems of Chaika and Eskin on Birkhoff genericity and Oseledets regularity in almost all directions for the Teichmüller geodesic flow.

A measure on a locally compact group is said to be spread out if one of its convolution powers is not singular with respect to Haar measure. Using Markov chain theory, we conduct a detailed analysis of random walks on homogeneous spaces with spread out increment distribution. For finite volume spaces, we arrive at a complete picture of the asymptotics of the n-step distributions: they equidistribute towards Haar measure, often exponentially fast and locally uniformly in the starting position. In addition, many classical limit theorems are shown to hold. In the infinite volume case, we prove recurrence and a ratio limit theorem for symmetric spread out random walks on homogeneous spaces of at most quadratic growth. This settles one direction in a long-standing conjecture.

In this article, we study compactifications of homogeneous spaces coming from equivariant, open embeddings into a generalized flag manifold $G/P$. The key to this approach is that in each case $G/P$ is the homogeneous model for a parabolic geometry; the theory of such geometries provides a large supply of geometric tools and invariant differential operators that can be used for this study. A classical theorem of Wolf shows that any involutive automorphism of a semisimple Lie group $G$ with fixed point group $H$ gives rise to a large family of such compactifications of homogeneous spaces of $H$. Most examples of (classical) Riemannian symmetric spaces as well as many non-symmetric examples arise in this way. A specific feature of the approach is that any compactification of that type comes with the notion of ‘curved analog’ to which the tools we develop also apply. The model example of this is a general Poincaré–Einstein manifold forming the curved analog of the conformal compactification of hyperbolic space. In the first part of the article, we derive general tools for the analysis of such compactifications. In the second part, we analyze two families of examples in detail, which in particular contain compactifications of the symmetric spaces $\mathit{SL}(n,\mathbb{R})/\mathit{SO}(p,n-p)$ and $\mathit{SO}(n,\mathbb{C})/\mathit{SO}(n)$. We describe the decomposition of the compactification into orbits, show how orbit closures can be described as the zero sets of smooth solutions to certain invariant differential operators and prove a local slice theorem around each orbit in these examples.

We define a natural topology on the collection of (equivalence classes up to scaling of) locally finite measures on a homogeneous space and prove that in this topology, pushforwards of certain infinite-volume orbits equidistribute in the ambient space. As an application of our results we prove an asymptotic formula for the number of integral points in a ball on some varieties as the radius goes to infinity.

We consider point distributions in compact connected two-point homogeneous spaces (Riemannian symmetric spaces of rank one). All such spaces are known: they are the spheres in the Euclidean spaces, the real, complex and quaternionic projective spaces and the octonionic projective plane. For all such spaces the best possible bounds for the quadratic discrepancies and sums of pairwise distances are obtained in the paper (Theorems 2.1 and 2.2). Distributions of points of $t$-designs on such spaces are also considered (Theorem 2.3). In particular, it is shown that the optimal $t$-designs meet the best possible bounds for quadratic discrepancies and sums of pairwise distances (Corollary 2.1). Our approach is based on the Fourier analysis on two-point homogeneous spaces and explicit spherical function expansions for discrepancies and sums of distances (Theorems 4.1 and 4.2).

Let $G$ be a real reductive group and $Z=G/H$ a unimodular homogeneous $G$ space. The space $Z$ is said to satisfy VAI (vanishing at infinity) if all smooth vectors in the Banach representations $L^{p}(Z)$ vanish at infinity, $1\leqslant p<\infty$. For $H$ connected we show that $Z$ satisfies VAI if and only if it is of reductive type.

The goal of this paper is the study of homogeneous Riemannian structure tensors within the framework of reduction under a group H of isometries. In a first result, H is a normal subgroup of the group of symmetries associated with the reducing tensor . The situation when H is any group acting freely is analyzed in a second result. The invariant classes of homogeneous tensors are also investigated when reduction is performed. It turns out that the geometry of the fibres is involved in the preservation of some of them. Some classical examples illustrate the theory. Finally, the reduction procedure is applied to fibrings of almost contact manifolds over almost Hermitian manifolds. If the structure is, moreover, Sasakian, the obtained reduced tensor is homogeneous Kähler.

Symplectic induction was first introduced by Weinstein as the symplectic analogue of induced representations, and was further developed by Guillemin and Sternberg. This paper deals with the case where the symplectic manifold in question is a semisimple coadjoint orbit of a Lie group. In this case, the construction is generalized by adding a smooth mapping, in order to obtain various symplectic forms. In particular, when the orbit is elliptic, a study of the complex geometry shows that quantization commutes with induction.

We consider homogeneous Lorentz spaces of dimension at least 3. We prove that if such a space has ‘big’ isotropy (that is, a non-precompact and irreducible isotropy group), then this space must have constant sectional curvature. As a corollary, we obtain a new direct proof of the fact that irreducible Lorentz symmetric spaces have constant curvature, which was known via (algebraic) classification.