In the previous post of this series, we gave the statements of some of the results of Breuillard and Sert on the definition and basic properties of the joint spectrum, and we promised to discuss the proofs in subsequent posts.
Today, after a long hiatus, I’ll try to accomplish part of this promise. More precise, I’ll transcript below my notes for the two talks (by Rodolfo Gutiérrez-Romo and myself) aiming to explain to the participants of our groupe de travail the proof of the first portion of Theorem 5 in the previous post, i.e., the convergence of (cf. Theorem 5 below), the convergence of
(cf. Theorem 7 below), and the equality of the limits (cf. Theorem 9 below).
Evidently, all mistakes in what follows are my sole responsibility.
1. Spectral radius formula revisited
Let be a reductive linear algebraic group. Recall that the Cartan projection
and Jordan projection
were defined in the previous post via the Cartan decomposition
and the Jordan–Chevalley decomposition
with
elliptic,
unipotent, and
“hyperbolic” conjugated to
.
The semisimple rank of
is
where
is a maximal torus of
and
is the center of
. We denote by
,
a system of roots such that
is a base of simple roots.
Each induces a weight
satisfying
and
for all
, where
is the Lie subalgebra of
and
is a fixed extension of the Killing form on the Lie subalgebra
of
to the Lie algebra
of
such that
becomes an orthogonal decomposition.
The weights ,
, are the highest weights of distinguished representations
,
of
. One has
where is a choice of
-invariant norm with
diagonalisable in an orthonormal basis and
stable under the adjoint operation, and
denotes the top eigenvalue of a matrix
. In particular, the Cartan projection
is represented by a vector of logarithms of norms of matrices, the Jordan projection
is represented by a vector of the logarithms of the moduli of top eigenvalues of matrices, and, a fortiori, the usual formula for the spectral radius implies that:
for every
.
2. Proximal elements and Cartan projections
As we indicated in § 2.1 of the previous post of this series, the convergence of relies on the notion of proximal matrices.
Definition 2 Let
be the Fubini-Study metric on the projective space
of a finite-dimensional real vector space
equipped with an Euclidean norm
.Given
, we say that
is a
-proximal matrix whenever:
has an unique eigenvalue of maximal modulus with eigendirection
and
-invariant supplementary hyperplane
;
;
for all
with
and
.
In general, we say that an element of a reductive linear algebraic group
with distinguished representations
,
, is
–proximal when the matrices
are
-proximal for all
.
A basic feature of proximal elements is the fact their Cartan and Jordan projections are comparable (cf. Lemmas 2.15 and 2.16 of Breuillard–Sert paper extracted from Benoist’s paper).
Lemma 3 There is a constant
such that
and
for all
.For each
, there is a constant
such that the Cartan and Jordan projections of any
-proximal element
satisfy
Another crucial feature of proximal elements (discovered by Abels, Margulis and Soifer, see Theorem 4.1 of their paper) is their ubiquity in Zariski dense monoids:
Theorem 4 (Abel–Margulis–Soifer) Let
be a connected, reductive, real Lie group. Suppose that
is a Zariski dense monoid. Then, there exists
such that, for all
, there exists a finite subset
with the property: given
, there exists
so that
is
-proximal.
At this point, we are ready to prove the convergence of Cartan projections:
Theorem 5 Let
be a connected reductive real Lie group and suppose that
is a compact subset generating a Zariski dense subgroup. Then,
converges in the Hausdorff topology as
.
Proof: By Lemma 2 of the previous post, our task is reduced to show that ,
, stays in a compact region of
, and for each
, there exists
such that
for all
and
.
By Lemma 3, there exists a constant such that
for all . It follows that
for all
, that is,
is confined in a compact region of
.
Let us now estimate for
, say
with
. By Abels–Margulis–Soifer theorem 4, we can select a finite subset
of the monoid generated by
such that for each
, there exists
so that
is
-proximal. In particular, we can take
such that
is
-proximal for all
. By Lemma 3, we have
and
Since , it follows from the triangular inequality that
Therefore, if we fix and we write
,
, we can use the Euclidean division
,
to obtain an element of
via the formula
It follows from the definitions and Lemma 3 that
Since
by taking (or equivalently
) we derive that
Hence, given , there exists
such that
for all ,
. This completes the proof.
3. Twisting and Jordan projections
A Zariski dense monoid of matrices is twisting in the sense that it always contains an element putting a finite configuration of lines and hyperplanes in general positions:
Lemma 6 Let
be a connected, reductive Lie group and suppose that
is a Zariski dense monoid. Given a finite collection
,
, of irreducible representations of
and finite configurations
and
,
, of points and hyperplanes in
, there is an element
such that
for all
and
.
Proof: Since are irreducible, the sets
are non-empty and Zariski open in
. Thus,
is Zariski open in and non-empty (because
is connected). Since
is Zariski dense,
This completes the argument.
Remark 1 The conclusion of this lemma can be reinforced as follows (cf. Remark 2.22 of Breuillard–Sert paper): it is possible to select
from a finite subset of
depending only on
and
(but not on
and
).
At this stage, we can start the discussion of the convergence of Jordan projections:
Theorem 7 Let
be a connected reductive real Lie group and suppose that
is a compact subset generating a Zariski dense subgroup. Then,
converges in the Hausdorff topology as
.
Proof: Similarly to the previous section (on convergence of Cartan projections), our task consists into showing that for each , there exists
such that
for all ,
. In this direction, let us fix
and let us take
,
. By the formula for the spectral radius (cf. Lemma 1), we can fix
with
By Abels–Margulis–Soifer theorem 4, we can fix a finite subset of the monoid
generated by
such that for some
, we have that
is
-proximal.
By Lemma 3,
where , and
for all .
Consider the distinguished representations ,
, of
. Note that the dominant eigendirection
and the dominated hyperplane
for the actions of the proximal matrices
on
are the same for all
.
We fix . By the twisting property in Lemma 6, there exists
, say
, such that
for all and
.
The dynamics of projective actions of the iterates of a proximal matrix is easy to describe: any direction transverse to
is attracted towards
. By rendering this argument slightly more quantitative (with the aid of the so-called Tits proximality criterion), Breuillard and Sert proved in Lemma 3.6 of their paper that
Lemma 8 If
is
-proximal and
is a finite subset such that
for all
and
, then there exists
such that for all
and
, one has that
is
-proximal for all
.
By applying this lemma with , we can select
such that
is
-proximal for all
,
and
.
Once again, it follows from Lemma 3 that
and
for all and
.
By Euclidean division, we can write with
and define
From our discussion above, we derive that
Since and
by letting (or equivalently,
) we conclude that
for all . This completes the proof.
4. Coincidence of the limits
Let be a connected, reductive real Lie group and let
be a compact subset generating a Zariski dense monoid. By Theorems 5 and 7, we have that
as .
Proof: By the formula for the spectral radius (cf. Lemma 1), for all , one has
as
. In particular,
.
In order to derive the other inclusion, we recall that the proof of Theorem 5 about the convergence of Cartan projections revealed that there exists and a constant
such that for all
and
, there exists
with
and
Therefore,
Since , we have that
is bounded and, a fortiori,
as . This shows that
, as desired.
5. Realization of the joint spectrum by sequences
Closing this post, let us further discuss Theorem 5 from the previous post by showing that with
is realized by a single sequence
in the sense that
.
For this sake, we use Abels–Margulis–Soifer theorem 4 and the strong version in Remark 1 of the twisting property in Lemma 6 to select a finite subset of
and some constants
such that for each
there are
with the property that
is a Schottky family in the sense that
is
-proximal, and
and
for all
. (This nomenclature comes from the fact that the projective actions of the elements in a Schottky family resemble the classical Schottky groups.) Note that
where
.
Let us now choose a rapidly increasing sequence so that
for all , and we define
by
By definition, any finite word has the form
where
and
is a prefix of
. Observe that
By Lemma 3, . Moreover, Lemma 2.17 in Breuillard–Sert paper ensures that the Schottky property for the family
makes that
is a
-proximal element with
Therefore, it follows from Lemma 3 that
Since converges to
, we conclude that
converges to
as
.
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