Deformations of complex structures on Γ/SL 2(C)

LetG be a connected complex semisimple Lie group. Let Γ be a cocompact lattice inG. In this paper, we show that whenG isSL ₂(C), nontrivial deformations of the canonical complex structure onX exist if and only if the first Betti number of the lattice Γ is non-zero. It may be remarked that for a wide class of arithmetic groups Γ, one can find a subgroup Γ′ of finite index in Γ, such that Γ′/Γ′,Γ′] is finite (it is a conjecture of Thurston that this is true for all cocompact lattices inSL(2, C)). We also show thatG acts trivially on the coherent cohomology groupsH ⁱ(Γ/G, O) for anyi≥0.