In this article, we establish the Grothendieck–Serre conjecture over valuation rings: for a reductive group scheme $G$ over a valuation ring $V$ with fraction field $K$, a $G$-torsor over $V$ is trivial if it is trivial over $K$. This result is predicted by the original Grothendieck–Serre conjecture and the resolution of singularities. The novelty of our proof lies in overcoming subtleties brought by general nondiscrete valuation rings. By using flasque resolutions and inducting with local cohomology, we prove a non-Noetherian counterpart of Colliot-Thélène–Sansuc's case of tori. Then, taking advantage of techniques in algebraization, we obtain the passage to the Henselian rank-one case. Finally, we induct on Levi subgroups and use the integrality of rational points of anisotropic groups to reduce to the semisimple anisotropic case, in which we appeal to properties of parahoric subgroups in Bruhat–Tits theory to conclude. In the last section, by using extension properties of reflexive sheaves on formal power series over valuation rings and patching of torsors, we prove a variant of Nisnevich's purity conjecture.

Let $ H $ be a compact subgroup of a locally compact group $ G $ . We first investigate some (operator) (co)homological properties of the Fourier algebra $A(G/H)$ of the homogeneous space $G/H$ such as (operator) approximate biprojectivity and pseudo-contractibility. In particular, we show that $ A(G/H) $ is operator approximately biprojective if and only if $ G/H $ is discrete. We also show that $A(G/H)^{**}$ is boundedly approximately amenable if and only if G is compact and H is open. Finally, we consider the question of existence of weakly compact multipliers on $A(G/H)$ .

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.

We prove effective equidistribution of primitive rational points and of primitive rational points defined by monomials along long horocycle orbits in products of the torus and the modular surface. This answers a question posed in joint work by the first and the last named author with Shahar Mozes and Uri Shapira. Under certain congruence conditions we prove the joint equidistribution of conjugate rational points in the 2-torus and the modular surface.

We study exceptional Jordan algebras and related exceptional group schemes over commutative rings from a geometric point of view, using appropriate torsors to parametrize and explain classical and new constructions, and proving that over rings, they give rise to nonisomorphic structures.

We begin by showing that isotopes of Albert algebras are obtained as twists by a certain $\mathrm F_4$ -torsor with total space a group of type $\mathrm E_6$ and, using this, that Albert algebras over rings in general admit nonisomorphic isotopes even in the split case, as opposed to the situation over fields. We then consider certain $\mathrm D_4$ -torsors constructed from reduced Albert algebras, and show how these give rise to a class of generalised reduced Albert algebras constructed from compositions of quadratic forms. Showing that this torsor is nontrivial, we conclude that the Albert algebra does not uniquely determine the underlying composition, even in the split case. In a similar vein, we show that a given reduced Albert algebra can admit two coordinate algebras which are nonisomorphic and have nonisometric quadratic forms, contrary, in a strong sense, to the case over fields, established by Albert and Jacobson.

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.

A new method for classifying naturally reductive spaces is presented. This method relies on a new construction and the structure theory of naturally reductive spaces recently developed by the author. This method is applied to obtain the classification of all naturally reductive spaces in dimension 7 and 8.

In this paper, we study a class of homogeneous Finsler metrics of vanishing $S$-curvature on a $(4n+3)$-dimensional sphere. We find a second order ordinary differential equation that characterizes Einstein metrics with constant Ricci curvature $1$ in this class. Using this equation we show that there are infinitely many homogeneous Einstein metrics on $S^{4n+3}$ of constant Ricci curvature $1$ and vanishing $S$-curvature. They contain the canonical metric on $S^{4n+3}$ of constant sectional curvature $1$ and the Einstein metric of non-constant sectional curvature given by Jensen in 1973.

This paper introduces a class of abstract linear representations on Banach convolution function algebras over homogeneous spaces of compact groups. Let $G$ be a compact group and $H$ a closed subgroup of $G$. Let $\mu $ be the normalized $G$-invariant measure over the compact homogeneous space $G/H$ associated with Weil's formula and $1\,\le \,p\,<\,\infty $. We then present a structured class of abstract linear representations of the Banach convolution function algebras ${{L}^{p}}\left( G/H,\,\mu \right)$.

A function $f:X\rightarrow X$ determines a topology $P(f)$ on $X$ by taking the closed sets to be those sets $A\subseteq X$ with $f(A)\subseteq A$. The topological space $(X,P(f))$ is called a functionally Alexandroff space. We completely characterise the homogeneous functionally Alexandroff spaces.

This paper introduces a unified operator theory approach to the abstract Plancherel (trace) formulas over homogeneous spaces of compact groups. Let $G$ be a compact group and let $H$ be a closed subgroup of $G$. Let ${G}/{H}\;$ be the left coset space of $H$ in $G$ and let $\mu$ be the normalized $G$-invariant measure on ${G}/{H}\;$ associated with Weil’s formula. Then we present a generalized abstract notion of Plancherel (trace) formula for the Hilbert space ${{L}^{2}}\left( {G}/{H,\,\mu }\; \right)$.

We obtain an algorithm computing the Chern–Schwartz–MacPherson (CSM) classes of Schubert cells in a generalized flag manifold $G/B$ . In analogy to how the ordinary divided difference operators act on Schubert classes, each CSM class of a Schubert class is obtained by applying certain Demazure–Lusztig-type operators to the CSM class of a cell of dimension one less. These operators define a representation of the Weyl group on the homology of $G/B$ . By functoriality, we deduce algorithmic expressions for CSM classes of Schubert cells in any flag manifold $G/P$ . We conjecture that the CSM classes of Schubert cells are an effective combination of (homology) Schubert classes, and prove that this is the case in several classes of examples. We also extend our results and conjecture to the torus equivariant setting.

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.

Let G be a locally compact group and H be a compact subgroup of G. Using a general criterion established by Neufang [‘A unified approach to the topological centre problem for certain Banach algebras arising in abstract harmonic analysis’, Arch. Math.82(2) (2004), 164–171], we show that the Banach algebra L1(G/H) is strongly Arens irregular for a large class of locally compact groups.

Let M=G/K be a generalized flag manifold, that is, an adjoint orbit of a compact, connected and semisimple Lie group G. We use a variational approach to find non-Kähler homogeneous Einstein metrics for flag manifolds with two isotropy summands. We also determine the nature of these Einstein metrics as critical points of the scalar curvature functional under fixed volume.

Let $P$ be a maximal proper parabolic subgroup of a connected simple linear algebraic group $G$, defined over $\mathbb{C}$, such that $n\,:=\,{{\dim}_{\mathbb{C}}}\,G/P\,\ge \,4$. Let $\iota :\,Z\,\to \,G/P$ be a reduced smooth hypersurface of degree at least $\left( n\,-\,1 \right)\,.\,\deg \text{ree}\left( T\left( G/P \right) \right)/n$. We prove that the restriction of the tangent bundle ${{\iota }^{*}}\,TG/P$ is semistable.

We present a structure theorem for a broad class of homeomorphisms of finite order on countable zero dimensional spaces. As applications we show the following.

1. (a) Every countable nondiscrete topological group not containing an open Boolean subgroup can be partitioned into infinitely many dense subsets.

2. (b) If $G$ is a countably infinite Abelian group with finitely many elements of order 2 and $\beta G$ is the Stone–Čech compactification of $G$ as a discrete semigroup, then for every idempotent $p\,\,\in \,\,\beta G\backslash \{0\}$, the subset $\{p,-p\}\subset \beta G$ generates algebraically the free product of one-element semigroups $\{p\}$ and $\{-p\}$.

Let G be a simple linear algebraic group defined over an algebraically closed field k of characteristic p ≥ 0, and let P be a maximal proper parabolic subgroup of G. If p > 0, then we will assume that dimG/P ≤ p. Let ι : H ↪ G/P be a reduced smooth hypersurface in G/P of degree d. We will assume that the pullback homomorphism is an isomorphism (this assumption is automatically satisfied when dimH ≥ 3). We prove that the tangent bundle of H is stable if the two conditions τ(G/P) ≠ d and hold; here n = dimH, and τ(G/P) ∈ is the index of G/P which is defined by the identity = where L is the ample generator of Pic(G/P) and is the anti–canonical line bundle of G/P. If d = τ(G/P), then the tangent bundle TH is proved to be semistable. If p > 0, and then TH is strongly stable. If p > 0, and d = τ(G/P), then TH is strongly semistable.

We show that every countable direct system of finite-dimensional real or complex Lie groups has a direct limit in the category of Lie groups modelled on locally convex spaces. This enables us to push all basic constructions of finite-dimensional Lie theory to the case of direct limit groups. In particular, we obtain an analogue of Lie's third theorem: every countable-dimensional locally finite real or complex Lie algebra arises as the Lie algebra of some regular Lie group (a suitable direct limit group).

Let a1… ad be a basis of the Lie algebra g of a connected Lie group G and let M be a Lie subgroup of,G. If dx is a non-zero positive quasi-invariant regular Borel measure on the homogeneous space X = G/M and S: X × G → C is a continuous cocycle, then under a rather weak condition on dx and S there exists in a natural way a (weakly*) continuous representation U of G in Lp (X;dx) for all p ε [1,].

Let Ai be the infinitesimal generator with respect to U and the direction ai, for all i ∈ { 1… d}. We consider n–th order strongly elliptic operators H = ΣcαAα with complex coefficients cα. We show that the semigroup S generated by the closure of H has a reduced heat kernel K and we derive upper bounds for k and all its derivatives.