Finiteness results for lattices in certain Lie groups

Abstract

In this note we establish some general finiteness results concerning lattices Γ in connected Lie groups G which possess certain “density” properties (see Moskowitz, M., On the density theorems of Borel and Furstenberg, Ark. Mat. 16 (1978), 11–27, and Moskowitz, M., Some results on automorphisms of bounded displacement and bounded cocycles, Monatsh. Math. 85 (1978), 323–336). For such groups we show that Γ always has finite index in its normalizer N_G(Γ). We then investigate analogous questions for the automorphism group Aut(G) proving, under appropriate conditions, that Stab_Aut(G)(Γ) is discrete. Finally we show, under appropriate conditions, that the subgroup $\tilde{\Gamma}=\{i_{\gamma}:\gamma \in \Gamma \},\ i_{\gamma}(x)=\gamma x\gamma^{-1}$, of Aut(G) has finite index in Stab_Aut(G)(Γ). We test the limits of our results with various examples and counterexamples.