Nonnegative curvature, symmetry and fundamental group

Abstract

We prove a result on equivariant deformations of flat bundles, and as a corollary, we obtain two ``splitting in a finite cover'' theorems for isometric group actions on Riemannian manifolds with infinite fundamental groups, where the manifolds are either compact of nonnegative Ricci curvature, or complete of nonnegative sectional curvature.