Families of Group Actions, Generic Isotriviality, and Linearization

We study families of reductive group actions on A2 parametrized by curves and show that every faithful action of a non-finite reductive group on A3 is linearizable, i.e. G-isomorphic to a representation of G. The difficulties arise for non-connected groups G. We prove a Generic Equivalence Theorem which says that two affine mor- phisms p: S → Y and q: T → Y of varieties with isomorphic (closed) fibers become isomorphic under a dominant ́etale base change φ : U → Y . A special case is the following result. Call a morphism φ: X → Y a fibration with fiber F if φ is flat and all fibers are (reduced and) isomorphic to F. Then an affine fibration with fiber F admits an ́etale dominant morphism μ: U → Y such that the pull-back is a trivial fiber bundle: U ×Y X ≃ U × F . As an application we give short proofs of the following two (known) results: (a) Every affine A1-fibration over a normal variety is locally trivial in the Zariski-topology; (b) Every affine A2-fibration over a smooth curve is locally trivial in the Zariski-topology.