Rigidity And Unirational Groups

Abstract

We prove a rigidity theorem for morphisms from products of open subschemes of the projective line into solvable groups not containing a copy of $\Ga$ (for example, wound unipotent groups). As a consequence, we deduce several structural results about unirational group schemes, including that unirationality for group schemes descends through separable extensions. We also apply the main result to prove that permawound unipotent groups are unirational and -- when wound -- commutative.