We study the planar 3-colorablesubgroup $\mathcal{E}$ of Thompson’s group F and its even part ${\mathcal{E}_{\rm EVEN}}$. The latter is obtained by cutting $\mathcal{E}$ with a finite index subgroup of F isomorphic to F, namely the rectangular subgroup $K_{(2,2)}$. We show that the even part ${\mathcal{E}_{\rm EVEN}}$ of the planar 3-colorable subgroup admits a description in terms of stabilisers of suitable subsets of dyadic rationals. As a consequence ${\mathcal{E}_{\rm EVEN}}$ is closed in the sense of Golan and Sapir. We then study three quasi-regular representations associated with ${\mathcal{E}_{\rm EVEN}}$: two are shown to be irreducible and one to be reducible.

If $\mu $ is a smooth measure supported on a real-analytic submanifold of ${\mathbb {R}}^{2n}$ which is not contained in any affine hyperplane, then the Weyl transform of $\mu $ is a compact operator.

Let $G= N\rtimes H$ be a locally compact group which is a semi-direct product of a closed normal subgroup N and a closed subgroup H. The Bohr compactification ${\rm Bohr}(G)$ and the profinite completion ${\rm Prof}(G)$ of G are, respectively, isomorphic to semi-direct products $Q_1 \rtimes {\rm Bohr}(H)$ and $Q_2 \rtimes {\rm Prof}(H)$ for appropriate quotients $Q_1$ of ${\rm Bohr}(N)$ and $Q_2$ of ${\rm Prof}(N).$ We give a precise description of $Q_1$ and $Q_2$ in terms of the action of H on appropriate subsets of the dual space of N. In the case where N is abelian, we have ${\rm Bohr}(G)\cong A \rtimes {\rm Bohr}(H)$ and ${\rm Prof}(G)\cong B \rtimes {\rm Prof}(H),$ where A (respectively B) is the dual group of the group of unitary characters of N with finite H-orbits (respectively with finite image). Necessary and sufficient conditions are deduced for G to be maximally almost periodic or residually finite. We apply the results to the case where $G= \Lambda\wr H$ is a wreath product of discrete groups; we show in particular that, in case H is infinite, ${\rm Bohr}(\Lambda\wr H)$ is isomorphic to ${\rm Bohr}(\Lambda^{\rm Ab}\wr H)$ and ${\rm Prof}(\Lambda\wr H)$ is isomorphic to ${\rm Prof}(\Lambda^{\rm Ab} \wr H),$ where $\Lambda^{\rm Ab}=\Lambda/ [\Lambda, \Lambda]$ is the abelianisation of $\Lambda.$ As examples, we compute ${\rm Bohr}(G)$ and ${\rm Prof}(G)$ when G is a lamplighter group and when G is the Heisenberg group over a unital commutative ring.

The aim of the article is to provide a characterization of the Haagerup property for locally compact, second countable groups in terms of actions on $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}$-finite measure spaces. It is inspired by the very first definition of amenability, namely the existence of an invariant mean on the algebra of essentially bounded, measurable functions on the group.

Several well-known open questions (such as: are all groups sofic/hyperlinear?) have a common form: can all groups be approximated by asymptotic homomorphisms into the symmetric groups $\text{Sym}(n)$ (in the sofic case) or the finite-dimensional unitary groups $\text{U}(n)$ (in the hyperlinear case)? In the case of $\text{U}(n)$, the question can be asked with respect to different metrics and norms. This paper answers, for the first time, one of these versions, showing that there exist finitely presented groups which are not approximated by $\text{U}(n)$ with respect to the Frobenius norm $\Vert T\Vert _{\text{Frob}}=\sqrt{\sum _{i,j=1}^{n}|T_{ij}|^{2}},T=[T_{ij}]_{i,j=1}^{n}\in \text{M}_{n}(\mathbb{C})$. Our strategy is to show that some higher dimensional cohomology vanishing phenomena implies stability, that is, every Frobenius-approximate homomorphism into finite-dimensional unitary groups is close to an actual homomorphism. This is combined with existence results of certain nonresidually finite central extensions of lattices in some simple $p$-adic Lie groups. These groups act on high-rank Bruhat–Tits buildings and satisfy the needed vanishing cohomology phenomenon and are thus stable and not Frobenius-approximated.

If $G\ncong \operatorname{Alt}(\mathbb{N})$ is an inductive limit of finite alternating groups, then the indecomposable characters of $G$ are precisely the associated characters of the ergodic invariant random subgroups of $G$.

We prove an inverse theorem for the Gowers $U^{2}$-norm for maps $G\rightarrow {\mathcal{M}}$ from a countable, discrete, amenable group $G$ into a von Neumann algebra ${\mathcal{M}}$ equipped with an ultraweakly lower semi-continuous, unitarily invariant (semi-)norm $\Vert \cdot \Vert$. We use this result to prove a stability result for unitary-valued $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}$-representations $G\rightarrow {\mathcal{U}}({\mathcal{M}})$ with respect to $\Vert \cdot \Vert$.

Wreath products of nondiscrete locally compact groups are usually not locally compact groups, nor even topological groups. As a substitute introduce a natural extension of the wreath product construction to the setting of locally compact groups. Applying this construction, we disprove a conjecture of Trofimov, constructing compactly generated locally compact groups of intermediate growth without any open compact normal subgroup.

We give a means of estimating the equivariant compression of a group G in terms of properties of open subgroups G i ⊂ G whose direct limit is G. Quantifying a result by Gal, we also study the behaviour of the equivariant compression under amalgamated free products G 1∗H G 2 where H is of finite index in both G 1 and G 2.

Hughes has defined a class of groups that we call finite similarity structure (FSS) groups. Each FSS group acts on a compact ultrametric space by local similarities. The best-known example is Thompson’s group V. Guided by previous work on Thompson’s group, we show that many FSS groups are of type F∞. This generalizes work of Ken Brown from the 1980s.

In this note we show that the members of a certain class of local similarity groups are ${l}^{2}$-invisible, i.e. the (non-reduced) group homology of the regular unitary representation vanishes in all degrees. This class contains groups of type ${F}_{\infty }$, e.g. Thompson’s group $V$ and Nekrashevych–Röver groups. They yield counterexamples to a generalized zero-in-the-spectrum conjecture for groups of type ${F}_{\infty }$.

It is well known that a finitely generated group ${\rm\Gamma}$ has Kazhdan’s property (T) if and only if the Laplacian element ${\rm\Delta}$ in $\mathbb{R}[{\rm\Gamma}]$ has a spectral gap. In this paper, we prove that this phenomenon is witnessed in $\mathbb{R}[{\rm\Gamma}]$. Namely, ${\rm\Gamma}$ has property (T) if and only if there exist a constant ${\it\kappa}>0$ and a finite sequence ${\it\xi}_{1},\ldots ,{\it\xi}_{n}$ in $\mathbb{R}[{\rm\Gamma}]$ such that ${\rm\Delta}^{2}-{\it\kappa}{\rm\Delta}=\sum _{i}{\it\xi}_{i}^{\ast }{\it\xi}_{i}$. This result suggests the possibility of finding new examples of property (T) groups by solving equations in $\mathbb{R}[{\rm\Gamma}]$, possibly with the assistance of computers.

We study the affine formal algebra $R$ of the Lubin–Tate deformation space as a module over two different rings. One is the completed group ring of the automorphism group $\Gamma $ of the formal module of the deformation problem, the other one is the spherical Hecke algebra of a general linear group. In the most basic case of height two and ground field $\mathbb {Q}_p$, our structure results include a flatness assertion for $R$ over the spherical Hecke algebra and allow us to compute the continuous (co)homology of $\Gamma $ with coefficients in $R$.

It is shown that for the computation of the Kazhdan constant for a compact group only the regular representation restricted to the orthogonal complement of the constant functions needs to be taken into account.

For a compact group G, we compute the Kazhdan constants κ(G, G) obtained by taking G itself as a generating subset. We get κ(G, G) = if G is finite of order n, and κ(G, G) = if G is infinite.

Let G be a locally compact group, and let D(G) be a dense subalgebra of the convolution algebra L1(G). Suppose that π is a unitary representation of G and that, for each u in D(G), π(u)) is a trace-class operator. Then the linear functional u → tr(π(u)) (the trace of π(u)) is called the D-character of π. We give a simple proof that the D-character of such a representation determines the representation up to unitary equivalence. As an application, we give an easy proof of the result of Harish-Chandra that the K-finite characters of unitary representations of semisimple Lie groups determine the representations.

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 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.

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.

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].