Finite abelian subgroups in the groups of birational and bimeromorphic selfmaps

Abstract: Let $X$ be a complex projective variety. Suppose that the group of birational automorphisms of $X$ contains finite subgroups isomorphic to $(\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z})^r$ for $r$ fixed and $N$ arbitrarily large. We show that $r$ does not exceed $2\dim(X)$. Moreover, the equality holds if and only if $X$ is birational to an abelian variety. We also show that an analogous result holds for groups of bimeromorphic automorphisms of compact K\"ahler spaces, under some additional assumptions.