Distal Actions of Automorphisms of Lie Groups G on SubG

Abstract

AbstractFor a locally compact metrisable group G, we study the action of ${\rm Aut}(G)$ on ${\rm Sub}_G$ , the set of closed subgroups of G endowed with the Chabauty topology. Given an automorphism T of G, we relate the distality of the T-action on ${\rm Sub}_G$ with that of the T-action on G under a certain condition. If G is a connected Lie group, we characterise the distality of the T-action on ${\rm Sub}_G$ in terms of compactness of the closed subgroup generated by T in ${\rm Aut}(G)$ under certain conditions on the center of G or on T as follows: G has no compact central subgroup of positive dimension or T is unipotent or T is contained in the connected component of the identity in ${\rm Aut}(G)$ . Moreover, we also show that a connected Lie group G acts distally on ${\rm Sub}_G$ if and only if G is either compact or it is isomorphic to a direct product of a compact group and a vector group. All the results on the Lie groups mentioned above hold for the action on ${\rm Sub}^a_G$ , a subset of ${\rm Sub}_G$ consisting of closed abelian subgroups of G.