By studying the so-called traveling salesman groups, we obtain a new metric criterion for non-amenability. As an application, we give a new and very short proof of non-amenability of free Burnside groups with sufficiently big odd exponent.
We present new metric criteria for non-amenability and discuss applications. The main application of the results of this paper is the proof of non-amenability of R.Thompson's group F. This is a continuation of the series of papers on our criteria for non-amenability. The current paper is independent of other papers in the series.
A new proof of a Theorem of Nagnibeda and Pak on critical probabilities is given. The distinctive feature is to use a criterion of Folner which has been largely (and inexplicably) forgotten.
We study the action of groups generated by bounded activity automata with infinite alphabets on their orbital Schreier graphs. We introduce an amenability criterion for such groups based on the recurrence of the first level action. This criterion is a natural extension of the result that all groups generated by bounded activity automata with finite alphabets are amenable. Our motivation comes from the investigation of iterated monodromy groups of entire functions.
The goal is to extend a non-standard amenability test for groups, based on random walks and superharmonic functions, to group actions on sets, and to apply it to Thompson's group F using certain properties of extensive amenability. While no conclusive answer regarding the amenability of F is given, the approach is helpful in developing a new potentially useful criterion and testing it on a significant subclass of superharmonic functions.
In this paper we introduce a concept of an evacuation scheme on the Cayley graph of an infinite finitely generated group. This is a collection of infinite simple paths bringing all vertices to infinity. We impose a restriction that every edge can be used a uniformly bounded number of times in this scheme. An easy observation shows that existing of such a scheme is equivalent to non-amenability of the group. A special case happens if every edge can be used only once. These scheme are called pure. We obtain a criterion for existing of such a scheme in terms of isoperimetric constant of the graph…
We study skew-amenable topological groups, i.e., those admitting a left-invariant mean on the space of bounded real-valued functions left-uniformly continuous in the sense of Bourbaki. We prove characterizations of skew-amenability for topological groups of isometries and automorphisms, clarify the connection with extensive amenability of group actions, establish a Følner-type characterization, and discuss closure properties of the class of skew-amenable topological groups. Moreover, we isolate a dynamical sufficient condition for skew-amenability and provide several concrete variations of thi…
We show that the groups of finite energy loops and paths (that is, those of Sobolev class $H^1$) with values in a compact connected Lie group, as well as their central extensions, satisfy an amenability-like property: they admit a left-invariant mean on the space of bounded functions uniformly continuous with regard to a left-invariant metric. Every strongly continuous unitary representation $π$ of such a group (which we call skew-amenable) has a conjugation-invariant state on $B({\mathcal H}_π)$.
We observe that a Polish group $G$ is amenable if and only if every continuous action of $G$ on the Hilbert cube admits an invariant probability measure. This generalizes a result of Bogatyi and Fedorchuk. We also show that actions on the Cantor space can be used to detect amenability and extreme amenability of Polish non-archimedean groups as well as amenability at infinity of discrete countable groups. As corollary, the latter property can also be tested by actions on the Hilbert cube. These results generalize a criterion due to Giordano and de la Harpe.
The purpose of this article is to connect the notion of the amenability of a discrete group with a new form of structural Ramsey theory. The Ramsey theoretic reformulation of amenability constitutes a considerable weakening of the Folner criterion. As a by-product, it will be shown that in any non amenable group G, there is a subset E of G such that no finitely additive probability measure on G measures all translates of E equally.
We define the isoperimetric constant for any locally finite metric space and we study the property of having isoperimetric constant equal to zero. This property, called Small Neighborhood property, clearly extends amenability to any locally finite space. Therefore, we start making a comparison between this property and other notions of amenability for locally finite metric spaces that have been proposed by Gromov, Lafontaine and Pansu, by Ceccherini-Silberstein, Grigorchuk and de la Harpe and by Block and Weinberger. We discuss possible applications of the property SN in the study of embedding…
We prove that a uniformly coarsely proper hyperbolic cone over a bounded metric space consisting of a finite union of uniformly coarsely connected components each containing at least two points is non-amenable and apply this to visual Gromov hyperbolic spaces.
We provide a general criterion to deduce maximal amenability of von Neumann subalgebras $LΛ\subset LΓ$ arising from amenable subgroups $Λ$ of discrete countable groups $Γ$. The criterion is expressed in terms of $Λ$-invariant measures on some compact $Γ$-space. The strategy of proof is different from S. Popa's approach to maximal amenability via central sequences [Po83], and relies on elementary computations in a crossed-product C*-algebra.
We establish a characterization of amenability for general Hausdorff topological groups in terms of matchings with respect to finite uniform coverings. Furthermore, we prove that it suffices to just consider two-element uniform coverings. We also show that extremely amenable as well as compactly approximable topological groups satisfy a perfect matching property condition -- the latter even with regard to arbitrary uniform coverings. Finally, we prove that the automorphism group of a Fraïssé limit of a metric Fraïssé class is amenable if and only if the considered metric Fraïssé class has a ce…
We construct the first example of a coarsely non-amenable (= without Guoliang Yu's property A) metric space with bounded geometry which coarsely embeds into a Hilbert space.
We prove that hyperbolic groups are weakly amenable. This partially extends the result of Cowling and Haagerup showing that lattices in simple Lie groups of real rank one are weakly amenable. We take a combinatorial approach in the spirit of Haagerup and prove that for the word length metric d on a hyperbolic group, the Schur multipliers associated with r^d have uniformly bounded norms for 0<r<1. We then combine this with a Bozejko-Picardello type inequality to obtain weak amenability.
We prove that if G is a discrete group that admits a metrically proper action on a finite-dimensional CAT(0) cube complex X, then G is weakly amenable. We do this by constructing uniformly bounded Hilbert space representations for which the quantities z^{l(g)} are matrix coefficients. Here l is a length function on G obtained from the combinatorial distance function on the complex X.
We prove a general version of the amenability conjecture in the unified setting of a Gromov hyperbolic group G acting properly cocompactly either on its Cayley graph, or on a CAT(-1)-space. Namely, for any subgroup H of G, we show that H is co-amenable in G if and only if their exponential growth rates (with respect to the prescribed action) coincide. For this, we prove a quantified, representation-theoretical version of Stadlbauer's amenability criterion for group extensions of a topologically transitive subshift of finite type, in terms of the spectral radii of the classical Ruelle transfer …
In this thesis, we study the existence of universal objets of two differents types in the theory of topological groups and theirs actions on compacts spaces. In the first part, we contribute to the problem of existence of test spaces for amenability. We observe that a Polish group is amenable if and only if its every continuous action on the Hilbert cube admits an invariant probability measure. This generalizes a result of Bogatyi and Fedorchuk. We also show that actions on the Cantor space can be used to detect amenability and extreme amenability of Polish non-archimedean groups as well as am…
This is an expostion of various aspects of amenability and paradoxical decompositions for groups, group actions and metric spaces. First, we review the formalism of pseudogroups, which is well adapted to stating the alternative of Tarski, according to which a pseudogroup without invariant mean gives rise to paradoxical decompositions, and to defining a Følner condition. Using a Hall-Rado Theorem on matchings in graphs, we show then for pseudogroups that existence of an invariant mean is equivalent to the Følner condition; in the case of the pseudogroup of bounded perturbations of the identity …
This paper allows one to obtain a criterion for the existence of a projectively invariant measure formulated in terms of combinatorial properties of a group (amenability of some canonical quotient group). Such necessary and sufficient condition is a basis of the classification scheme for groups of homeomorphisms of the line. In particular, a nonamenability of Thompson's group $F$ follows from the obtained criterion.
We study property A for metric spaces $X$ with bounded geometry introduced by Guoliang Yu. Property A is an amenability-type condition, which is less restrictive than amenability for groups. The property has a connection with finite-dimensional approximation properties in the theory of operator algebras. It has been already known that property A of a metric space $X$ with bounded geometry is equivalent to nuclearity of the uniform Roe algebra C$^*_u(X)$. We prove that exactness and local reflexivity of C$^*_u(X)$ also characterize property A of $X$.
We describe how properties of metric groups and of unitary representations of metric groups can be presented in continuous logic. In particular we find $L_{ω_1 ω}$-axiomatization of amenability. We also show that in the case of locally compact groups some uniform version of the negation of Kazhdan's property {\bf (T)} can be viewed as a union of first-order axiomatizable classes. We will see when these properties are preserved under taking elementary substructures.
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 provide an affirmative answer to a question posed by Rosendal.
In this article we introduce and study uniform and non-uniform approximate lattices in locally compact second countable (lcsc) groups. These are approximate subgroups (in the sense of Tao) which simultaneously generalize lattices in lcsc group and mathematical quasi-crystals (a.k.a. Meyer sets) in lcsc abelian groups. We show that envelopes of strong approximate lattices are unimodular, and that approximate lattices in nilpotent groups are uniform. We also establish several results relating properties of approximate lattices and their envelopes. For example, we prove a version of the Milnor-Sc…
Given a metric space $(X,d)$, the wobbling group of $X$ is the group of bijections $g:X\rightarrow X$ satisfying $\sup\limits_{x\in X} d(g(x),x)<\infty$. We study algebraic and analytic properties of $W(X)$ in relation with the metric space structure of $X$, such as amenability of the action of the lamplighter group $ \bigoplus_{X} \mathbf Z/2\mathbf Z \rtimes W(X)$ on $\bigoplus_{X} \mathbf Z/2\mathbf Z$ and property (T).
This article generalizes the work of Ballmann and Światkowski to the case of Reflexive Banach spaces and uniformly convex Busemann spaces, thus giving a new fixed point criterion for groups acting on simplicial complexes.
We inspect Vietoris-Rips complexes $VR_t(X)$ of certain metric spaces $X$ using a new generalization of Bestvina-Brady discrete Morse theory. Our main result is a pair of metric criteria on $X$, called the Morse Criterion and Link Criterion, that allow us to deduce information about the homotopy types of certain $VR_t(X)$. One application is to topological data analysis, specifically persistence of homotopy type for certain Vietoris-Rips complexes. For example we recover some results of Adamaszek-Adams and Hausmann regarding homotopy types of $VR_t(S^n)$. Another application is to geometric gr…
In this paper we give a criterion for pairs of isometries of a nonpositively curved metric space to generate a free group. This criterion holds only in singular spaces, for example in Euclidean buildings. The original motivation for our criterion was to prove that the four dimensional Burau representation is faithful. Although we do not settle this question, we do exhibit a related 2-parameter family of faithful representations of the free group F_2.
We give a formula relating the topological rank of the full group of an aperiodic pmp equivalence relation to the cost of its ergodic components. Furthermore, we obtain examples of full groups having a dense free subgroup whose rank is equal to the topological rank of the full group, using a Baire category argument. We then study the automatic continuity property for full groups of aperiodic equivalence relations, and find a connected metric for which they have the automatic continuity property. This allows us to give an algebraic characterization of aperiodicity for pmp equivalence relations,…
An embeddability criterion for zero-dimensional metrizable topological spaces in zero-dimensional metrizable topological groups is given. A space which can be embedded as a closed subspace in a zero-dimensional metrizable group but is not strongly zero-dimensional is constructed; thereby, an example of a metrizable group with noncoinciding dimensions ind and dim is obtained. It is proved that one of Kulesza's zero-dimensional metrizable spaces cannot be embedded in a metrizable zero-dimensional group.