The paper deals with six groups: the unitary, orthogonal, symplectic, Fredholm unitary, special Fredholm orthogonal, and Fredholm symplectic groups of an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. When each is furnished with the invariant Finsler structure induced by the operator-norm on the Lie algebra, it is shown that, between any two points of the group, there exists a geodesic realising this distance (often, indeed, a unique geodesic), except in the full orthogonal group, in which there are pairs of points that cannot be joined by minimising geodesics, and also pairs that cannot even be joined by minimising paths. A full description is given of each of these possibilities.

For any group G, we introduce the subset S(G) of elements g which are conjugate to for some positive integer k. We show that, for any bounded representation π of G any g in S(G), either π(g) = 1 or the spectrum of π(g) is the full unit circle in C. As a corollary, S(G) is in the kernel of any homomorphism from G to the unitary group of a post-liminal C*-algebra with finite composition series.

Next, for a topological group G, we consider the subset of elements approximately conjugate to 1, and we prove that it is contained in the kernel of any uniformly continuous bounded representation of G, and of any strongly continuous unitary representation in a finite von Neumann algebra.

We apply these results to prove triviality for a number of representations of isotropic simple algebraic groups defined over various fields.

Let G be an exponential Lie group. We study primitive ideals (i.e. kernels of irreducible *-representations of L1(G)), with bounded approximate units (b.a.u.). We prove a result relating the existence of b.a.u. in certain primitive ideals with the geometry of the corresponding Kirillov orbits. This yields for a solvable group of class 2, a characterization of the primitive ideals with b.a.u.

This paper calculates the central Borel 2 cocycles for certain 2-step nilpotent Lie groups G with values in the injectives A of the category of 2nd countable locally compact abelian groups. The G's include, among others, all groups locally isomorphic to a Heisenberg group. The A's are direct sums of vector groups and (possibly infinite dimensional) tori, and in particular include R, T, and Cx. The main results are as follows.

(4.1) Every symmetric central 2 cocycle is trivial.

(4.2) Every central 2 cocycle is cohomologous with a skew symmetric bimultiplicative one (which is necessarily jointly continuous by [7]).

(4.3) The corresponding cohomology group H2cent (G, A) is calculated as the skew symmetric jointly continuous bimultiplicative maps modulo Homcont ([G, G]–, A).

These results generalize the case when G is a connected abelian Lie group and A = T, due to Kleppner [3]. Using standard facts of the cohomology of groups they can be interpreted as classifying all continuous central extensions (1) → A → E → G → (1) of the group G by the abelian group A. Finally some counterexamples are given to extending these results.

It is shown that if {Gn: n = 1, 2,…} is a countable family of Hausdorff kω-topological groups with a common closed subgroup A, then the topological amalgamated free product *AGn exists and is a Hausdorff kω-topological group with each Gn as a closed subgroup. A consequence is the theorem of La Martin that epimorphisms in the category of kω-topological groups have dense image.

A (local) Lie loop is a real analytic manifold M with a base point e and three analytic functions (x, y) → x° y, x\y, x/y: M × M → M (respectively, U × U → M for an open neighbourhood U of e in M) such that the following conditions are satisfied: (i) x ° e = e ° x = e, (ii) x ° (x\y) = y, and (iii) (x/y)° y = x for all x, y ε M (respectively, U). If the multiplication ° is associative, then M is a (local) Lie group. The tangent vector space L(M) in e is equipped with an anticommutative bilinear operation (X, Y) →[X, Y] and a trilinear operation (X, Y, Z) →〈X, Y, Z〉. These are defined as follows: Let B be a convex symmetric open neighbourhood of 0 in L(M) such that the exponential function maps B diffeomorphically onto an open neighbourhood V of e in M and transport the operation ° into L(M) by defining X ° Y = (exp|B)−1((exp X)° (exp Y)) for X and Y in a neighbourhood C of 0 in B such that (exp C) ° (exp C) ⊂ V. Similarly, we transport / and \.

In 1947 I. E. Segal proved that to each non-degenerate ~ -representation R of L1 (= L1 (G) for a compact group G) with representation space , there corresponds a continuous unitary representation W of G, also with representation space , which satisfies

for each fL1 and hk. This was extended to Lp,1p < , in 1970 by E. Hewitt and K. A. Ross. We now generalize this result to any symmetric homogeneous convolution Banach alebra of pseudomeasures on G. Further we prove that the correspondence preserves irreduibility.

Representations of non-type I groups G which may be expressed as an increasing union of type I normal subgroups are considered. Groups with this structure are natural generalisations of the CAR algebra (viewed as a twisted group C*-algebra) and are also group theoretic analogues of AF algebras. This paper gives a systematic account of their representation theory based on a canonical construction of one-cocycles for the G-action on the dual of a normal subgroup. Some examples are considered showing how to construct inquivalent irreducible representations (non-cohomologous cocycles) and also factor representations by a method which generalises the well-known construction of non-isomorphic factors for the CAR algebra.

Let G be a group acting faithfully on a homogeneous tree of order p + 1, p > 1. Let be the space of functions on the Poission boundary ω, of zero mean on ω. When p is a prime. G is a discrete subgroup of PGL2(Qp) of finite covolume. The representations of the special series of PGL2(Qp), Which are irreducible and unitary in an appropriate completion of , are shown to be reducible when restricted to G. It is proved that these representations of G are algebraically reducible on and topologically irreducible on endowed with the week topology.

Let σ be an ergodic endomorphism of the r–dimensional torus and Π a semigroup generated by two affine transformations lying above σ. We show that the flow defined by Π admits minimal sets of positive Hausdorff dimension and we give necessary and sufficient conditions for this flow to be minimal.

When G is a topological group, the set N(G) of continuous self-maps of G, and the subset N0(G) of those which fix the identity of G, are near-rings. In this paper we examine the (left) ideal structure of these near-rings when G is finite. N0(G) is shown to have exactly two maximal ideals, whose intersection is the radical. In the final section we investigate subnear-rings of N0(G) determined by certain continuous elements of the endomorphism near-ring.

Let G be a second countable locally compact group possessing a normal subgroup N with G/N abelian. We prove that if G/N is discrete then G has T1 primitive ideal space if and only if the G-quasiorbits in Prim N are closed. This condition on G-quasiorbits arose in Pukanzky's work on connected and simply connected solvable Lie groups where it is equivalent to the condition of Auslander and Moore that G be type R on N (-nilradical). Using an abstract version of Pukanzky's arguments due to Green and Pedersen we establish that if G is a connected and simply connected Lie group then Prim G is T1 whenever G-quasiorbits in [G, G] are closed.

The topology of the Čech fundamental group of the one-point compactification of an appropriate space Y induces a topology on the fundamental group of Y. We describe this topology in terms of a topological group introduced by Higman.

For a locally compact group G, the von Neumann kernel, n(G), is the intersection of the kernels of the finite dimensional (continuous) unitary representations of G. In this paper we calculate n(G) explicitly for a general connected locally compact group and for certain classes of non-connected groups.

Let G denote any locally compact abelian group with the dual group Γ. We construct a new kind of subalgebra L1(G) ⊗ΓS of L1(G) from given Banach ideal S of L1(G). We show that L1(G) ⊗гS is the larger amoung all strongly character invariant homogeneous Banach algebras in S. when S contains a strongly character invariant Segal algebra on G, it is show that L1(G) ⊗гS is also the largest among all strongly character invariant Segal algebras in S. We give applications to characterizations of two kinds of subalgebras of L1(G)-strongly character invariant Segal algebras on G and Banach ideal in L1(G) which contain a strongly character invariant Segal algebra on G.

In this paper we study commutative topological semigroups S admitting an absolutely continuous measure. When S is cancellative we show that S admits a weaker topology J with respect to which (S, J) is embeddable as a subsemigroup with non-empty interior in some locally compact topological group. As a consequence, we deduce certain results related to the existence of invariant measures on S and for a large class of locally compact topological semigroups S, we associate S with some useful topological subsemigroup of a locally compact group.

We determine necessary and sufficient conditions for the multiplier representations of a discrete group to be type I. This result extends the corresponding result for ordinary representation given by Kaniuth in [4].

N(G) denotes the near-ring of all continuous selfmaps of the topological group G (under composition and the pointwise induced operation) and N0(G) is the subnear-ring of N(G) consisting of all functions having the identity element of G fixed. It is known that if G is discrete then (a) N0(G) is simple and (b) N(G) is simple if and only if G is not of order 2. We begin a study of the ideal structure of these near-rings when G is a disconnected group.

If G is a topological group then we can think of G acting on itself by multiplying on the left. We would like to know when this action has the property that whenever g and h are distinct elements of G, then the element xg does not get arbitrarily close to xh as x varies in G. It is natural to say that this is the case if {(xg, xh): x∈G} is separated from the diagonal of G × G by a uniform neighbourhood of the diagonal.

A semigroup over a generalized tree, denoted by the term ℳL-semigroup, is a compact semigroup S such that Green's relation H is a congruence on S and S/H is an abelian generalized tree with idempotent endpoints and E(S/H) a Lawson semilattice. Each such semigroup is characterized as being constructible from cylindrical subsemigroups of S and the generalized tree S/H in a manner similar to the construction of semigroups over trees and of the hormos. Indeed, semigroups over trees are shown to be particular examples of the construction given herein.