Totally Geodesic Spectra of Quaternionic Hyperbolic Orbifolds

Jeffrey S. Meyer

Published 2015-05-14Version 1

In this paper we analyze and classify the totally geodesic subspaces of finite volume quaternionic hyperbolic orbifolds and their generalizations, locally symmetric orbifolds arising from irreducible lattices in Lie groups of the form $(\mathbf{Sp}_{2n}(\mathbb{R}))^q \times \prod_{i=1}^r \mathbf{Sp}(p_i,n-p_i) \times (\mathbf{Sp}_{2n}(\mathbb{C}))^s$. We give criteria for when the totally geodesic subspaces of such an orbifold determine its commensurability class. We give a parametrization of the commensurability classes of finite volume quaternionic hyperbolic orbifolds in terms of arithmetic data, which we use to show that the complex hyperbolic totally geodesic subspaces of a quaternionic hyperbolic orbifold determine its commensurability class, but the real hyperbolic totally geodesic subspaces do not. Lastly, our tools allow us to show that every cocompact lattice $\Gamma<\mathbf{Sp}(m,1)$, $m\ge 2$, contains quasiconvex surface subgroups.