Non-existence of genuine (compact) quantum symmetries of compact, connected smooth manifolds Debashish Goswami1 Indian Statistical Institute 203, B. T. Road, Kolkata 700108 Email:
[email protected], Phone: 0091 33 25753420, Fax: 0091 33 25773071 Abstract Suppose that a compact quantum group Q acts faithfully on a smooth, compact, con- nected manifold M, i.e. has a C∗ (co)-action α on C(M), such that α(C∞(M)) ⊆ C∞(M, Q) and the linear span of α(C∞(M))(1 ⊗Q) is dense in C∞(M, Q) with respect to the Fr´echet topology. It was conjectured by the author quite a few years ago that Q must be commuta- ∗ tive as a C algebra i.e. Q =∼ C(G) for some compact group G acting smoothly on M. The goal of this paper is to prove the truth of this conjecture. A remarkable aspect of the proof is the use of probabilistic techniques involving Brownian stopping time. Subject classification : 81R50, 81R60, 20G42, 58B34. Keywords: Compact quantum group, quantum isometry group, Riemannian manifold, smooth action. 1 Introduction In this article, we settle a conjecture about quantum group actions on classical spaces, which was made by the author in [16] quite a few years ago and which has been proved in certain cases by him and others over the recent years. Let us give some background before stating it. Quantum groups have their origin in both physics and mathematics, as generalized symmetry objects of possibly noncommutative spaces. Following pioneering works by Drinfeld [9] Jimbo [21], Faddeev-Reshetikhin-Takhtajan [12] and others (see, e.g.