Some Subgroups of the Cremona Groups

We explore algebraic subgroups of the Cremona group Cn over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero. First, we consider some class of algebraic subgroups of Cn that we call flattenable. It contains all tori. Linearizability of the natural rational actions of flattenable subgroups on An is intimately related to rationality of the invariant fields and, for tori, is equivalent to it. We prove stable linearizability of these actions and show the existence of nonlinearizable actions among them. This is applied to exploring maximal tori in Cn and to proving the existence of nonlinearizable, but stably linearizable elements of infinite order in Cn for n > 6. Then we consider some subgroups J (x1, . . . , xn) of Cn that we call the rational de Jonquières subgroups. We prove that every affine algebraic subgroup of J (x1, . . . , xn) is solvable and the group of its connected components is Abelian. We also prove that every reductive algebraic subgroup of J (x1, . . . , xn) is diagonalizable. Further, we prove that the natural rational action on An of any unipotent algebraic subgroup of J (x1, . . . , xn) admits a rational cross-section which is an affine subspace of An. We show that in this statement “unipotent” cannot be replaced by “connected solvable”. This is applied to proving a conjecture of A. Joseph on the existence of “rational slices” for the coadjoint representations of finite-dimensional algebraic Lie algebras g under the assumption that the Levi decomposition of g is a direct product. We then consider some overgroup Ĵ (x1, . . . , xn) of J (x1, . . . , xn) and prove that every torus in Ĵ (x1, . . . , xn) is linearizable. Finally, we prove the existence of an element g ∈ C3 of order 2 such that g / ∈ G for every connected affine algebraic subgroup G of C∞; in particular, g is not stably linearizable.