Classification of abelian actions with globally hypoelliptic orbitwise laplacian I: The Greenfield-Wallach conjecture on nilmanifolds

For a $\mathbb{R}^{k}-$action generated by vector fields $X_{1},...,X_{k}$ we define an operator $-(X_{1}^{2}+...+X_{k}^{2})$, the orbitwise laplacian. In this paper, we study and classify $\mathbb{R}^{k}-$actions whose orbitwise laplacian is globally hypoelliptic (GH). In three different settings we prove that any such action is given by a translation action on some compact nilmanifold, (i) when the space is a compact nilmanifold, (ii) when the first Betti number of the manifold is sufficiently large, (iii) when the codimension of the orbitfoliation of the action is $1$. As a consequence, we prove the Greenfield-Wallach conjecture on all nilmanifolds. Along the way, we also calculate the cohomology of GH $\mathbb{R}^{k}-$actions, proving, in particular, that it is always finite dimensional.