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.

The author has previously associated to each commutative ring with unit $R$ and étale groupoid $\mathscr{G}$ with locally compact, Hausdorff and totally disconnected unit space an $R$-algebra $R\,\mathscr{G}$. In this paper we characterize when $R\,\mathscr{G}$ is Noetherian and when it is Artinian. As corollaries, we extend the characterization of Abrams, Aranda Pino and Siles Molina of finite-dimensional and of Noetherian Leavitt path algebras over a field to arbitrary commutative coefficient rings and we recover the characterization of Okniński of Noetherian inverse semigroup algebras and of Zelmanov of Artinian inverse semigroup algebras.

Based on the abstract version of the Smital property, we introduce an operator $DS$. We use it to characterise the class of semitopological abelian groups, for which addition is a quasicontinuous operation.

A class of abelian topological groups was previously defined to be a variety of topological groups with coproducts if it is closed under forming subgroups, quotients, products and coproducts in the category of all abelian topological groups and continuous homomorphisms. This extended research on varieties of topological groups initiated by the second author. The key to describing varieties of topological groups generated by various classes was proving that all topological groups in the variety are a quotient of a subgroup of a product of groups in the generating class. This paper analyses generating varieties of topological groups with coproducts. It focuses on the interplay between forming products and coproducts. It is proved that the variety of topological groups with coproducts generated by all discrete groups contains topological groups which cannot be expressed as a quotient of a subgroup of a product of a coproduct of discrete groups. It is proved that the variety of topological groups with coproducts generated by any infinite-dimensional Hilbert space contains all infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, answering an open question. This contrasts with the result that a variety of topological groups generated by a topological group does not contain any infinite-dimensional Hilbert space of greater cardinality.

It is proved that any surjective morphism $f:\mathbb{Z}^{{\it\kappa}}\rightarrow K$ onto a locally compact group $K$ is open for every cardinal ${\it\kappa}$. This answers a question posed by Hofmann and the second author.

A paper of Almeida and Trotter [‘The pseudoidentity problem and reducibility for completely regular semigroups’, Bull. Aust. Math. Soc.63 (2001), 407–433] makes essential use of free profinite semigroupoids over profinite graphs with infinitely many vertices. It has since been shown that such structures must be handled with great care. In this note, it is verified that the required properties hold for the profinite graphs considered by Almeida and Trotter, thereby filling the gaps in the proof.

Meta-centralizers of non-locally compact group algebras are studied. Theorems about their representations with the help of families of generalized measures are proved. Isomorphisms of group algebras are investigated in relation with meta-centralizers.

The author has previously associated to each commutative ring with unit $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}\Bbbk $ and étale groupoid $\mathscr{G}$ with locally compact, Hausdorff, totally disconnected unit space a $\Bbbk $-algebra $\Bbbk \, \mathscr{G}$. The algebra $\Bbbk \, \mathscr{G}$ need not be unital, but it always has local units. The class of groupoid algebras includes group algebras, inverse semigroup algebras and Leavitt path algebras. In this paper we show that the category of unitary$\Bbbk \, \mathscr{G}$-modules is equivalent to the category of sheaves of $\Bbbk $-modules over $\mathscr{G}$. As a consequence, we obtain a new proof of a recent result that Morita equivalent groupoids have Morita equivalent algebras.

In this paper, it is shown that every compact Hausdorff $K$-space has countable tightness. This result gives a positive answer to a problem posed by Malykhin and Tironi [‘Weakly Fréchet–Urysohn and Pytkeev spaces’, Topology Appl.104 (2000), 181–190]. We show that a semitopological group $G$ that is a $K$-space is first countable if and only if $G$ is of point-countable type. It is proved that if a topological group $G$ is a $K$-space and has a locally paracompact remainder in some Hausdorff compactification, then $G$ is metrisable.

We prove that groups definable in o-minimal structures have Cartan subgroups, and only finitely many conjugacy classes of such subgroups. We also delineate with precision how these subgroups cover the ambient group.

Suppose that $G$ is a second countable, locally compact Hausdorff groupoid with abelian stabiliser subgroups and a Haar system. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the groupoid ${C}^{\ast } $-algebra to have Hausdorff spectrum. In particular, we show that the spectrum of ${C}^{\ast } (G)$ is Hausdorff if and only if the stabilisers vary continuously with respect to the Fell topology, the orbit space ${G}^{(0)} / G$ is Hausdorff, and, given convergent sequences ${\chi }_{i} \rightarrow \chi $ and ${\gamma }_{i} \cdot {\chi }_{i} \rightarrow \omega $ in the dual stabiliser groupoid $\widehat{S}$ where the ${\gamma }_{i} \in G$ act via conjugation, if $\chi $ and $\omega $ are elements of the same fibre then $\chi = \omega $.

In this paper, it is shown that there exists a connected topological group which is not homeomorphic to any $\omega $-narrow topological group, and also that there exists a zero-dimensional topological group $G$ with neutral element $e$ such that the subspace $X = G\setminus \{e\}$ is not homeomorphic to any topological group. These two results give negative answers to two open problems in Arhangel’skii and Tkachenko [Topological Groups and Related Structures (Atlantis Press, Amsterdam, 2008)]. We show that if a compact topological group is a $K$-space, then it is metrisable. This result gives an affirmative answer to a question posed by Malykhin and Tironi [‘Weakly Fréchet–Urysohn and Pytkeev spaces’, Topology Appl. 104 (2000), 181–190] in the category of topological groups. We also prove that a regular $K$-space $X$ is a weakly Fréchet–Urysohn space if and only if $X$has countable tightness.

The construction (by Kapranov) of the space of infinitesimal paths on a manifold is extended to include higher-dimensional infinitesimal objects, encoding contractions of infinitesimal loops. This full infinitesimal groupoid is shown to have the algebra of polyvector fields as its nonlinear cohomology.

We introduce the notion of wide representation of an inverse semigroup and prove that with a suitably defined topology there is a space of germs of such a representation that has the structure of an étale groupoid. This gives an elegant description of Paterson's universal groupoid and of the translation groupoid of Skandalis, Tu and Yu. In addition, we characterize the inverse semigroups that arise from groupoids, leading to a precise bijection between the class of étale groupoids and the class of complete and infinitely distributive inverse monoids equipped with suitable representations, and we explain the sense in which quantales and localic groupoids carry a generalization of this correspondence.

The variety of topological groups generated by the class of all abelian kω-groups has been shown to equal the variety of topological groups generated by the free abelian topological group on [0, 1]. In this paper it is proved that the free abelian topological group on a compact Hausdorff space X generates the same variety if and only if X is not scattered.

We give some general results concerning continuity of measurable homomorphisms of topological groups. As a consequence we show that a Christensen measurable homomorphism of a Polish abelian group into a locally compact topological group is continuous. We also obtain similar results for the universally measurable homomorphisms and the homomorphisms that have the Baire property.

We establish various properties of the definition of cohomology of topological groups given by Grothendieck, Artin and Verdier in SGA4, including a Hochschild–Serre spectral sequence and a continuity theorem for compact groups. We use these properties to compute the cohomology of the Weil group of a totally imaginary field, and of the Weil-étale topology of a number ring recently introduced by Lichtenbaum (both with integer coefficients).

A pro-Lie group is a projective limit of finite dimensional Lie groups. It is proved that a surjective continuous group homomorphism between connected pro-Lie groups is open. In fact this remains true for almost connected pro-Lie groups where a topological group is called almost connected if the factor group modulo the identity component is compact. As consequences we get a Closed Graph Theorem and the validity of the Second Isomorphism Theorem for pro-Lie groups in the almost connected context.

A mapping f : G → s from a left topological group G into a semigroup S is a local homomorphism if for every x є G \ {e}, there is a neighborhood Ux of e such that f (xy) = f (x)f (y) for all y є Ux \ {e}. A local homomorphism f : G → S is onto if for every neighborhood U of e, f(U \ {e}) = S. We show that

(1) every countable regular left topological group containing a discrete subset with exactly one accumulation point admits a local homomorphism onto N,

(2) it is consistent that every countable topological group containing a discrete subset with exactly one accumulation point admits a local homomorphism onto any countable semigroup,

(3) it is consistent that every countable nondiscrete maximally almost periodic topological group admits a local homomorphism onto the countably infinite right zero semigroup.

To each filter ℱ on ω, a certain linear subalgebra A(ℱ) of Rω, the countable product of lines, is assigned. This algebra is shown to have many interesting topological properties, depending on the properties of the filter ℱ. For example, if ℱ is a free ultrafilter, then A(ℱ) is a Baire subalgebra of ℱω for which the game OF introduced by Tkachenko is undetermined (this resolves a problem of Hernández, Robbie and Tkachenko); and if ℱ1 and ℱ2 are two free filters on ω that are not near coherent (such filters exist under Martin's Axiom), then A (ℱ1) and A(ℱ2) are two o-bounded and OF-undetermined subalgebras of ℱω whose product A(ℱ1) × A(ℱ2) is OF-determined and not o-bounded (this resolves a problem of Tkachenko). It is also shown that the statement that the product of two o-bounded subrings of ℱω is o-bounded is equivalent to the set-theoretic principle NCF (Near Coherence of Filters); this suggests that Tkachenko's question on the productivity of the class of o-bounded topological groups may be undecidable in ZFC.