Invariant measures and measurable projective factors for actions of higher-rank lattices on manifolds

Abstract: We consider smooth actions of lattices in higher-rank semisimple Lie groups on manifolds. We define two numbers $r(G)$ and $m(G)$ associated with the roots system of the Lie algebra of a Lie group $G$. If the dimension of the manifold is smaller than $r(G)$, then we show the action preserves a Borel probability measure. If the dimension of the manifold is at most $m(G)$, we show there is a quasi-invariant measure on the manifold such that the action is measurable isomorphic to a relatively measure preserving action over a standard boundary action.