Suppose $(X,\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E})$ is a subshift, $P_{X}(n)$ is the word complexity function of $X$, and $\text{Aut}(X)$ is the group of automorphisms of $X$. We show that if $P_{X}(n)=o(n^{2}/\log ^{2}n)$, then $\text{Aut}(X)$ is amenable (as a countable, discrete group). We further show that if $P_{X}(n)=o(n^{2})$, then $\text{Aut}(X)$ can never contain a non-abelian free monoid (and, in particular, can never contain a non-abelian free subgroup). This is in contrast to recent examples, due to Salo and Schraudner, of subshifts with quadratic complexity that do contain such a monoid.

Let $G$ be a separable locally compact group with type $I$ left regular representation, $\widehat{G}$ its dual, $A(G)$ its Fourier algebra and $f\in A(G)$ with compact support. If $G=\mathbb{R}$ and the Fourier transform of $f$ is compactly supported, then, by a classical Paley–Wiener theorem, $f=0$. There are extensions of this theorem for abelian and some unimodular groups. In this paper, we prove that if $G$ has no (nonempty) open compact subsets, $\hat{f}$, the regularised Fourier cotransform of $f$, is compactly supported and $\text{Im}\,\hat{f}$ is finite dimensional, then $f=0$. In connection with this result, we characterise locally compact abelian groups whose identity components are noncompact.

We study the automorphism groups of countable homogeneous directed graphs (and some additional homogeneous structures) from the point of view of topological dynamics. We determine precisely which of these automorphism groups are amenable (in their natural topologies). For those which are amenable, we determine whether they are uniquely ergodic, leaving unsettled precisely one case (the ‘semi-generic’ complete multipartite directed graph). We also consider the Hrushovski property. For most of our results we use the various techniques of Angel et al [Random orderings and unique ergodicity of automorphism groups. J. Eur. Math. Soc., 16 (2014), 2059–2095], suitably generalized to a context in which the universal minimal flow is not necessarily the space of all orders. Negative results concerning amenability rely on constructions of the type considered in Zucker [Amenability and unique ergodicity of automorphism groups of Fraïssé structures. Fund. Math., 226 (2014), 41–61]. An additional class of structures (compositions) may be handled directly on the basis of very general principles. The starting point in all cases is the determination of the universal minimal flow for the automorphism group, which in the context of countable homogeneous directed graphs is given in Jasiński et al [Ramsey precompact expansions of homogeneous directed graphs. Electron. J. Combin., 21(4), (2014), 31] and the papers cited therein.

Hardy’s uncertainty principle for the Gabor transform is proved for locally compact abelian groups having noncompact identity component and groups of the form $\mathbb{R}^{n}\times K$, where $K$ is a compact group having irreducible representations of bounded dimension. We also show that Hardy’s theorem fails for a connected nilpotent Lie group $G$ which admits a square integrable irreducible representation. Further, a similar conclusion is made for groups of the form $G\times D$, where $D$ is a discrete group.

Classical finite association schemes lead to finite-dimensional algebras which are generated by finitely many stochastic matrices. Moreover, there exist associated finite hypergroups. The notion of classical discrete association schemes can be easily extended to the possibly infinite case. Moreover, this notion can be relaxed slightly by using suitably deformed families of stochastic matrices by skipping the integrality conditions. This leads to a larger class of examples which are again associated with discrete hypergroups. In this paper we propose a topological generalization of association schemes by using a locally compact basis space $X$ and a family of Markov-kernels on $X$ indexed by some locally compact space $D$ where the supports of the associated probability measures satisfy some partition property. These objects, called continuous association schemes, will be related to hypergroup structures on $D$. We study some basic results for this notion and present several classes of examples. It turns out that, for a given commutative hypergroup, the existence of a related continuous association scheme implies that the hypergroup has many features of a double coset hypergroup. We, in particular, show that commutative hypergroups, which are associated with commutative continuous association schemes, carry dual positive product formulas for the characters. On the other hand, we prove some rigidity results in particular in the compact case which say that for given spaces $X,D$ there are only a few continuous association schemes.

We consider abstract Sobolev spaces of Bessel-type associated with an operator. In this work, we pursue the study of algebra properties of such functional spaces through the corresponding semigroup. As a follow-up to our previous work, we show that by making use of the property of a ‘carré du champ’ identity, this algebra property holds in a wider range than previously shown.

We extend Følner’s amenability criterion to the realm of general topological groups. Building on this, we show that a topological group $G$ is amenable if and only if its left-translation action can be approximated in a uniform manner by amenable actions on the set $G$ . As applications we obtain a topological version of Whyte’s geometric solution to the von Neumann problem and give an affirmative answer to a question posed by Rosendal.

We prove Hardy-type inequalities for a fractional Dunkl–Hermite operator, which incidentally gives Hardy inequalities for the fractional harmonic oscillator as well. The idea is to use h-harmonic expansions to reduce the problem in the Dunkl–Hermite context to the Laguerre setting. Then, we push forward a technique based on a non-local ground representation, initially developed by Frank et al. [‘Hardy–Lieb–Thirring inequalities for fractional Schrödinger operators, J. Amer. Math. Soc. 21 (2008), 925–950’] in the Euclidean setting, to obtain a Hardy inequality for the fractional-type Laguerre operator. The above-mentioned method is shown to be adaptable to an abstract setting, whenever there is a ‘good’ spectral theorem and an integral representation for the fractional operators involved.

It is shown that various definitions of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}$ -Connes amenability and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}$ -contractibility are equivalent to older and simpler concepts.

The century-old extremal problem, solved by Carathéodory and Fejér, concerns a non-negative trigonometric polynomial $T(t) = a_0 + \sum\nolimits_{k = 1}^n {a_k} \cos (2\pi kt) + b_k\sin (2\pi kt){\ge}0$ , normalized by a 0=1, where the quantity to be maximized is the coefficient a 1 of cos (2π t). Carathéodory and Fejér found that for any given degree n, the maximum is 2 cos(π/n+2). In the complex exponential form, the coefficient sequence (c k ) ⊂ ℂ will be supported in [−n, n] and normalized by c 0=1. Reformulating, non-negativity of T translates to positive definiteness of the sequence (c k ), and the extremal problem becomes a maximization problem for the value at 1 of a normalized positive definite function c: ℤ → ℂ, supported in [−n, n]. Boas and Kac, Arestov, Berdysheva and Berens, Kolountzakis and Révész and, recently, Krenedits and Révész investigated the problem in increasing generality, reaching analogous results for all locally compact abelian groups. We prove an extension to all the known results in not necessarily commutative locally compact groups.

We give a succinct proof of a duality theorem obtained by Révész [‘Some trigonometric extremal problems and duality’, J. Aust. Math. Soc. Ser. A 50 (1991), 384–390] which concerns extremal quantities related to trigonometric polynomials. The key tool of our new proof is an intersection formula on dual cones in real Banach spaces. We show another application of this intersection formula which is related to integral estimates of nonnegative positive-definite functions.

Uniformization transforms a pseudo-Poisson process with unequal intensities (leaving rates) into one with uniform intensity. Self-transitions is the price to pay. Two intensities arise when one considers an absorbing barrier of a Markov process as a body in its own right: a pair of Markov processes intertwined by an extended Chapman–Kolmogorov equation naturally arises. We show that Sauer's two-state space empathy theory handles such intertwined processes. The price of self-transitions is also avoided.

Let $G$ be a locally compact amenable group and $A(G)$ and $B(G)$ be the Fourier and the Fourier–Stieltjes algebras of $G,$ respectively. For a power bounded element $u$ of $B(G)$ , let ${\mathcal{E}}_{u}:=\{g\in G:|u(g)|=1\}$ . We prove some convergence theorems for iterates of multipliers in Fourier algebras.

(a) If $\Vert u\Vert _{B(G)}\leq 1$ , then $\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }\Vert u^{n}v\Vert _{A(G)}=\text{dist}(v,I_{{\mathcal{E}}_{u}})\text{ for }v\in A(G)$ , where $I_{{\mathcal{E}}_{u}}=\{v\in A(G):v({\mathcal{E}}_{u})=\{0\}\}$ .

(b) The sequence $\{u^{n}v\}_{n\in \mathbb{N}}$ converges for every $v\in A(G)$ if and only if ${\mathcal{E}}_{u}$ is clopen and $u({\mathcal{E}}_{u})=\{1\}.$

(c) If the sequence $\{u^{n}v\}_{n\in \mathbb{N}}$ converges weakly in $A(G)$ for some $v\in A(G)$ , then it converges strongly.

We present the form of the solutions $f:S\rightarrow \mathbb{C}$ of the functional equation

$$\begin{eqnarray}\mathop{\sum }_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\in K}f(x+\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}y)=|K|f(x)f(y)\quad \text{for }x,y\in S,\end{eqnarray}$$

$f$

$f(\sum _{\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\in K}\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}x)\neq 0$

$x\in S$

$(S,+)$

$K$

$S$

We investigate $L^{p}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE})$ – $L^{q}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE})$ off-diagonal estimates for the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck semigroup $(e^{tL})_{t>0}$ . For sufficiently large $t$ (quantified in terms of $p$ and $q$ ), these estimates hold in an unrestricted sense, while, for sufficiently small $t$ , they fail when restricted to maximal admissible balls and sufficiently small annuli. Our counterexample uses Mehler kernel estimates.

Recently Houdayer and Isono have proved, among other things, that every biexact group $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ has the property that for any non-singular strongly ergodic essentially free action $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\curvearrowright (X,\unicode[STIX]{x1D707})$ on a standard measure space, the group measure space von Neumann algebra $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\ltimes L^{\infty }(X)$ is full. In this paper, we prove the same property for a wider class of groups, notably including $\text{SL}(3,\mathbb{Z})$ . We also prove that for any connected simple Lie group $G$ with finite center, any lattice $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\leqslant G$ , and any closed non-amenable subgroup $H\leqslant G$ , the non-singular action $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\curvearrowright G/H$ is strongly ergodic and the von Neumann factor $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\ltimes L^{\infty }(G/H)$ is full.

A locally compact group G is compact if and only if its convolution algebras contain non-zero (weakly) completely continuous elements. Dually, G is discrete if its function algebras contain non-zero completely continuous elements. We prove non-commutative versions of these results in the case of locally compact quantum groups.

We characterize dual spaces and compute hyperdimensions of irreducible representations for two classes of compact hypergroups namely conjugacy classes of compact groups and compact hypergroups constructed by joining compact and finite hypergroups. Also, studying the representation theory of finite hypergroups, we highlight some interesting differences and similarities between the representation theories of finite hypergroups and finite groups. Finally, we compute the Heisenberg inequality for compact hypergroups.

A set is shy or Haar null (in the sense of Christensen) if there exists a Borel set and a Borel probability measure μ on C[0, 1] such that and for all f ∈ C[0, 1]. The complement of a shy set is called a prevalent set. We say that a set is Haar ambivalent if it is neither shy nor prevalent.

The main goal of the paper is to answer the following question: what can we say about the topological properties of the level sets of the prevalent/non-shy many f ∈ C[0, 1]?

The classical Bruckner–Garg theorem characterizes the level sets of the generic (in the sense of Baire category) f ∈ C[0, 1] from the topological point of view. We prove that the functions f ∈ C[0, 1] for which the same characterization holds form a Haar ambivalent set.

In an earlier paper, Balka et al. proved that the functions f ∈ C[0, 1] for which positively many level sets with respect to the Lebesgue measure λ are singletons form a non-shy set in C[0, 1]. The above result yields that this set is actually Haar ambivalent. Now we prove that the functions f ∈ C[0, 1] for which positively many level sets with respect to the occupation measure λ ◦ f –1 are not perfect form a Haar ambivalent set in C[0, 1].

We show that for the prevalent f ∈ C[0, 1] for the generic y ∈ f([0, 1]) the level set f –1(y) is perfect. Finally, we answer a question of Darji and White by showing that the set of functions f ∈ C[0, 1] for which there exists a perfect set Pf ⊂ [0, 1] such that fʹ(x) = ∞ for all x ∈ Pf is Haar ambivalent.

This paper presents a structured study for abstract harmonic analysis of relative convolutions over canonical homogeneous spaces of semidirect product groups. Let $H,K$ be locally compact groups and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}:H\rightarrow \text{Aut}(K)$ be a continuous homomorphism. Let $G_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}=H\ltimes _{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}K$ be the semidirect product of $H$ and $K$ with respect to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$ and $G_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}/H$ be the canonical homogeneous space (left coset space) of $G_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}/H$ . We present a unified approach to the harmonic analysis of relative convolutions over the canonical homogeneous space $G_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}/H$ .