Division Algebras and Non-Commensurable Isospectral Manifolds

Abstract

A. Reid showed that if $\Gamma_1$ and $\Gamma_2$ are arithmetic lattices in $G = \operatorname{PGL}_2(\mathbb R)$ or in $\operatorname{PGL}_2(\mathbb C)$ which give rise to isospectral manifolds, then $\Gamma_1$ and $\Gamma_2$ are commensurable (after conjugation). We show that for $d \geq 3$ and ${\mathcal S} = \operatorname{PGL}_d(\mathbb R) / \operatorname{PGO}_d(\mathbb R)$, or ${\mathcal S} = \operatorname{PGL}_d(\mathbb C) / \operatorname{PU}_d(\mathbb C)$, the situation is quite different: there are arbitrarily large finite families of isospectral non-commensurable compact manifolds covered by $\mathcal S$. The constructions are based on the arithmetic groups obtained from division algebras with the same ramification points but different invariants.