Twisted étale groupoid algebras have recently been studied in the algebraic setting by several authors in connection with an abstract theory of Cartan pairs of rings. In this paper we show that extensions of ample groupoids correspond in a precise manner to extensions of Boolean inverse semigroups. In particular, discrete twists over ample groupoids correspond to certain abelian extensions of Boolean inverse semigroups, and we show that they are classified by Lausch’s second cohomology group of an inverse semigroup. The cohomology group structure corresponds to the Baer sum operation on twists.

We also define a novel notion of inverse semigroup crossed product, generalizing skew inverse semigroup rings, and prove that twisted Steinberg algebras of Hausdorff ample groupoids are instances of inverse semigroup crossed products. The cocycle defining the crossed product is the same cocycle that classifies the twist in Lausch cohomology.

By the Galvin–Mycielski–Solovay theorem, a subset X of the line has Borel’s strong measure zero if and only if $M+X\neq \mathbb {R}$ for each meager set M.

A set $X\subseteq \mathbb {R}$ is meager-additive if $M+X$ is meager for each meager set M. Recently a theorem on meager-additive sets that perfectly parallels the Galvin–Mycielski–Solovay theorem was proven: A set $X\subseteq \mathbb {R}$ is meager-additive if and only if it has sharp measure zero, a notion akin to strong measure zero.

We investigate the validity of this result in Polish groups. We prove, e.g., that a set in a locally compact Polish group admitting an invariant metric is meager-additive if and only if it has sharp measure zero. We derive some consequences and calculate some cardinal invariants.

In finite group theory, chief factors play an important and well-understood role in the structure theory. We here develop a theory of chief factors for Polish groups. In the development of this theory, we prove a version of the Schreier refinement theorem. We also prove a trichotomy for the structure of topologically characteristically simple Polish groups.

The development of the theory of chief factors requires two independently interesting lines of study. First we consider injective, continuous homomorphisms with dense normal image. We show such maps admit a canonical factorisation via a semidirect product, and as a consequence, these maps preserve topological simplicity up to abelian error. We then define two generalisations of direct products and use these to isolate a notion of semisimplicity for Polish groups.

For a given inverse semigroup, one can associate an étale groupoid which is called the universal groupoid. Our motivation is studying the relation between inverse semigroups and associated étale groupoids. In this paper, we focus on congruences of inverse semigroups, which is a fundamental concept for considering quotients of inverse semigroups. We prove that a congruence of an inverse semigroup induces a closed invariant set and a normal subgroupoid of the universal groupoid. Then we show that the universal groupoid associated to a quotient inverse semigroup is described by the restriction and quotient of the original universal groupoid. Finally we compute invariant sets and normal subgroupoids induced by special congruences including abelianization.

The paper gives a simple proof of Graev’s theorem (asserting that the free product of Hausdorff topological groups is Hausdorff) for a particular case which includes the countable case of $k_\omega $ -groups and the countable case of Lindelöf P-groups. For this it is shown that in these particular cases the topology of the free product of Hausdorff topological groups coincides with the $X_0$ -topology in the Mal’cev sense, where X is the disjoint union of the topological groups identifying their units.

Given an action ${\varphi }$ of inverse semigroup S on a ring A (with domain of ${\varphi }(s)$ denoted by $D_{s^*}$ ), we show that if the ideals $D_e$ , with e an idempotent, are unital, then the skew inverse semigroup ring $A\rtimes S$ can be realized as the convolution algebra of an ample groupoid with coefficients in a sheaf of (unital) rings. Conversely, we show that the convolution algebra of an ample groupoid with coefficients in a sheaf of rings is isomorphic to a skew inverse semigroup ring of this sort. We recover known results in the literature for Steinberg algebras over a field as special cases.

In this paper, we introduce quotients of étale groupoids. Using the notion of quotients, we describe the abelianizations of groupoid C*-algebras. As another application, we obtain a simple proof that effectiveness of an étale groupoid is implied by a Cuntz–Krieger uniqueness theorem for a universal groupoid C*-algebra.

To study when a paratopological group becomes a topological group, Arhangel’skii et al. [‘Topological games and topologies on groups’, Math. Maced. 8 (2010), 1–19] introduced the class of $(\,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},G_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1}})$-unfavourable spaces. We show that every $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$-complete (or normal) $(\,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},G_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1}})$-unfavourable semitopological group is a topological group. We prove that the product of a $(\,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},G_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1}})$-unfavourable space and a strongly Fréchet $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC},G_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1}})$-favourable space is $(\,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},G_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1}})$-unfavourable. We also show that continuous closed irreducible mappings preserve the $(\,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},G_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F1}})$-unfavourableness in both directions.

We study the locally compact abelian groups in the class ${\mathfrak E_{ \lt \infty }}$ , that is, having only continuous endomorphisms of finite topological entropy, and in its subclass $\mathfrak E_0$ , that is, having all continuous endomorphisms with vanishing topological entropy. We discuss the reduction of the problem to the case of periodic locally compact abelian groups, and then to locally compact abelian p-groups. We show that locally compact abelian p-groups of finite rank belong to ${\mathfrak E_{ \lt \infty }}$ , and that those of them that belong to $\mathfrak E_0$ are precisely the ones with discrete maximal divisible subgroup. Furthermore, the topological entropy of endomorphisms of locally compact abelian p-groups of finite rank coincides with the logarithm of their scale. The backbone of the paper is the Addition Theorem for continuous endomorphisms of locally compact abelian groups. Various versions of the Addition Theorem are established in the paper and used in the proofs of the main results, but its validity in the general case remains an open problem.

We study the following problem: For which Tychonoff spaces $X$ do the free topological group $F(X)$ and the free abelian topological group $A(X)$ admit a quotient homomorphism onto a separable and nontrivial (i.e., not finitely generated) group? The existence of the required quotient homomorphisms is established for several important classes of spaces $X$, which include the class of pseudocompact spaces, the class of locally compact spaces, the class of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}$-compact spaces, the class of connected locally connected spaces, and some others.

We also show that there exists an infinite separable precompact topological abelian group $G$ such that every quotient of $G$ is either the one-point group or contains a dense non-separable subgroup and, hence, does not have a countable network.

We prove that $A_{R}(G)\otimes _{R}A_{R}(H)\cong A_{R}(G\times H)$ if $G$ and $H$ are Hausdorff ample groupoids. As part of the proof, we give a new universal property of Steinberg algebras. We then consider the isomorphism problem for tensor products of Leavitt algebras, and show that no diagonal-preserving isomorphism exists between $L_{2,R}\otimes L_{3,R}$ and $L_{2,R}\otimes L_{2,R}$. In fact, there are no unexpected diagonal-preserving isomorphisms between tensor products of finitely many Leavitt algebras. We give an easy proof that every $\ast$-isomorphism of Steinberg algebras over the integers preserves the diagonal, and it follows that $L_{2,\mathbb{Z}}\otimes L_{3,\mathbb{Z}}\not \cong L_{2,\mathbb{Z}}\otimes L_{2,\mathbb{Z}}$ (as $\ast$-rings).

Kaplansky introduced the notions of CCR and GCR $C^{\ast }$-algebras, because they have a tractable representation theory. Many years later, he introduced the notions of CCR and GCR rings. In this paper we characterize when the algebra of an ample groupoid over a field is CCR and GCR. The results turn out to be exact analogues of the corresponding characterization of locally compact groupoids with CCR and GCR $C^{\ast }$-algebras. As a consequence, we classify the CCR and GCR Leavitt path algebras.

Answering a longstanding problem originating in Christensen’s seminal work on Haar null sets [Math. Scand. 28 (1971), 124–128; Israel J. Math. 13 (1972), 255–260; Topology and Borel Structure. Descriptive Topology and Set Theory with Applications to Functional Analysis and Measure Theory, North-Holland Mathematics Studies, 10 (Notas de Matematica, No. 51). (North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam–London; American Elsevier Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1974), iii+133 pp], we show that a universally measurable homomorphism between Polish groups is automatically continuous. Using our general analysis of continuity of group homomorphisms, this result is used to calibrate the strength of the existence of a discontinuous homomorphism between Polish groups. In particular, it is shown that, modulo $\text{ZF}+\text{DC}$, the existence of a discontinuous homomorphism between Polish groups implies that the Hamming graph on $\{0,1\}^{\mathbb{N}}$ has finite chromatic number.

The Banach–Mazur separable quotient problem asks whether every infinite-dimensional Banach space $B$ has a quotient space that is an infinite-dimensional separable Banach space. The question has remained open for over 80 years, although an affirmative answer is known in special cases such as when $B$ is reflexive or even a dual of a Banach space. Very recently, it has been shown to be true for dual-like spaces. An analogous problem for topological groups is: Does every infinite-dimensional (in the topological sense) connected (Hausdorff) topological group $G$ have a quotient topological group that is infinite dimensional and metrisable? While this is known to be true if $G$ is the underlying topological group of an infinite-dimensional Banach space, it is shown here to be false even if $G$ is the underlying topological group of an infinite-dimensional locally convex space. Indeed, it is shown that the free topological vector space on any countably infinite $k_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}}$-space is an infinite-dimensional toplogical vector space which does not have any quotient topological group that is infinite dimensional and metrisable. By contrast, the Graev free abelian topological group and the Graev free topological group on any infinite connected Tychonoff space, both of which are connected topological groups, are shown here to have the tubby torus $\mathbb{T}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}}$, which is an infinite-dimensional metrisable group, as a quotient group.

We show that Matui’s HK conjecture holds for groupoids of unstable equivalence relations and their corresponding $C^{\ast }$-algebras on one-dimensional solenoids.

We compute the homology groups of transformation groupoids associated with odometers and show that certain $(\mathbb{Z}\rtimes \mathbb{Z}_{2})$-odometers give rise to counterexamples to the HK conjecture, which relates the homology of an essentially principal, minimal, ample groupoid $G$ with the K-theory of $C_{r}^{\ast }(G)$. We also show that transformation groupoids of odometers satisfy the AH conjecture.

We prove completeness for the main examples of infinite-dimensional Lie groups and some related topological groups. Consider a sequence $G_{1}\subseteq G_{2}\subseteq \cdots \,$ of topological groups $G_{n}$ n such that $G_{n}$ is a subgroup of $G_{n+1}$ and the latter induces the given topology on $G_{n}$, for each $n\in \mathbb{N}$. Let $G$ be the direct limit of the sequence in the category of topological groups. We show that $G$ induces the given topology on each $G_{n}$ whenever $\cup _{n\in \mathbb{N}}V_{1}V_{2}\cdots V_{n}$ is an identity neighbourhood in $G$ for all identity neighbourhoods $V_{n}\subseteq G_{n}$. If, moreover, each $G_{n}$ is complete, then $G$ is complete. We also show that the weak direct product $\oplus _{j\in J}G_{j}$ is complete for each family $(G_{j})_{j\in J}$ of complete Lie groups $G_{j}$. As a consequence, every strict direct limit $G=\cup _{n\in \mathbb{N}}G_{n}$ of finite-dimensional Lie groups is complete, as well as the diffeomorphism group $\text{Diff}_{c}(M)$ of a paracompact finite-dimensional smooth manifold $M$ and the test function group $C_{c}^{k}(M,H)$, for each $k\in \mathbb{N}_{0}\cup \{\infty \}$ and complete Lie group $H$ modelled on a complete locally convex space.

We investigate continuous transitive actions of semitopological groups on spaces, as well as separately continuous transitive actions of topological groups.

We consider the following question: for which metrizable separable spaces $X$ does the free abelian topological group $A(X\oplus X)$ isomorphically embed into $A(X)$. While for many natural spaces $X$ such an embedding exists, our main result shows that if $X$ is a Cook continuum or $X$ is a rigid Bernstein set, then $A(X\oplus X)$ does not embed into $A(X)$ as a topological subgroup. The analogous statement is true for the free boolean group $B(X)$.

We consider generalised metrisability and cardinal invariants in quasitopological groups. We construct examples to show that some equalities of cardinal invariants in topological groups cannot be extended to quasitopological groups.