Rigidity of discrete groups and index theorems

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The purpose of this project was to investigate the rigidity of discrete groups from the viewpoint of geometry of the ideal boundary of negatively curved spaces and the cohomology of discrete groups. Our main result is summarized as follows.Let Γ be a Kleinian group acting on n-sphere. If Γ is convex cocompact, the quotient of the domain of discontinuity is compact by definition. However, the converse is not true in general. Izeki (head investigator) showed that if the Hausdorff dimension of the limit set of Γ is less than n/2 and the quotient of the domain of discontinuity is compact, then Γ is convex cocompact. As a consequence, such a Γ is quasiconformally stable. We also gave several applications to topology and geometry of conformally flat manifolds with positive scalar curvature. In case the Hausdorff dimension of the limit set is less than (n - 2) /2, we found a proof using the index theorem for higher A-genus.We also developed another approach to rigidity problems, which uses harmonic maps from a simplicial complex to a negatively curved metric space. We obtained a fixed-point theorem for a lattice in a p-adic Lie group, which should be regarded as a generalization of Margulis superrigidity.