Solvable fundamental groups of algebraic varieties and Kähler manifolds

Abstract

This is a long overdue write up of the following: If the fundamental group of a normal complex algebraic variety (respectively Zariski open subset of a compact Kähler manifold) is a solvable group of matrices over Q (respectively polycyclic group), then it is virtually nilpotent. This should be interpreted as saying that a large class of solvable groups will not occur as fundamental groups of such spaces. The essential strategy is to first "complete" these groups to algebraic groups (generalizing constructions of Malcev and Mostow), and then check that the identity component is unipotent. This is done by Galois theoretic methods in the algebraic case, and is reduced to homological properties of one dimensional characters in the analytic case.