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Anton Petrunin
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Cobounded ⇒ cocompact?

Assume $\Gamma$ acts by isometries on a separable Hilbert space $H$, and $$\operatorname{diam} H/\Gamma\le 1.$$ Is it true that $H/\Gamma$ is compact?

Comment.

At the moment I do not have an answer even if $\Gamma$ acts by translations. Here is a related question:

Let $L$ be a lattice in $\mathbb R^q$ ($q$ is any positive integer). Assume $$\operatorname{diam} \mathbb R^q/L>1000.$$ Is it true that there is a midpoint $m$ of two points in $L$ such that $|m-x|>1$ for any $x\in L$?

If the answer to the this question is "YES" then the answer to my original question is "NO".


Stupid example. Assume the action of $\Gamma$ on $H=\ell_2$ is generated by coordinate translations $x_n\mapsto x_n+\epsilon_n$. Then $$\operatorname{diam} H/\Gamma=\tfrac12\cdot\sqrt{\sum_{n=1}^\infty\epsilon_n^2}.$$ Thus, if $\operatorname{diam} H/\Gamma\le 1$ then $H/\Gamma$ is a quotient of Hilbert cube, and has to be compact.

Anton Petrunin
  • 45k
  • 14
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  • 299