This is a preliminary work in partial conmpletion of a PhD Thesis under the supervision of Professor Benjamin Steinberg at the City University of New York
Let $R$ be a unital commutative ring with unit and $\mathscr{G}$ an ample groupoid. Using the topology of the groupoid $\mathscr{G}$, Steinberg defined an etale groupoid algebra $R\mathscr{G}$. These etale groupoid algebras generalize various algebras including group algebras, commutative algebras over a field generated by idempotents, traditional groupoid algebras, Leavitt path algebras, higher-rank graph algebras, and inverse semigroup algebras. Steinberg later characterized the classical chain conditions for etale groupoid algebras. We characterize categorically noetherian and artinian, locally noetherian and artinian, and semisimple etale groupoid algebras, generalizing existing results for Leavitt path algebras.
We give a concise introduction to (discrete) algebras arising from étale groupoids, (aka Steinberg algebras) and describe their close relationship with groupoid C*-algebras. Their connection to partial group rings via inverse semigroups also explored.
In this paper we give some sufficient and some necessary conditions for an étale groupoid algebra to be a prime ring. As an application we recover the known primeness results for inverse semigroup algebras and Leavitt path algebras. It turns out that primeness of the algebra is connected with the dynamical property of topological transitivity of the groupoid. We obtain analogous results for semiprimeness.
Work of Jean Renault shows that, for topologically principal étale groupoids, a diagonal-preserving isomorphism of reduced $C^*$-algebras yields an isomorphism of groupoids. Several authors have proved analogues of this result for ample groupoid algebras over integral domains under suitable hypotheses. In this paper, we extend the known results by allowing more general coefficient rings and by weakening the hypotheses on the groupoids. Our approach has the additional feature that we only need to impose conditions on one of the two groupoids. Applications are given to Leavitt path algebras.
We construct the full and reduced C*-algebras of an ample groupoid from its complex Steinberg algebra. We also show that our construction gives the same C*-algebras as the standard constructions. In the last section, we consider an arbitrary locally compact, second-countable, étale groupoid, possibly non-Hausdorff. Using the techniques developed for Steinberg algebras, we show that every $*$-homomorphism from Connes' space of functions to $B(\mathcal{H})$ is automatically I-norm bounded. Previously, this was only known for Hausdorff groupoids.
We prove that the C*-algebra of a second-countable, étale, amenable groupoid is simple if and only if the groupoid is topologically principal and minimal. We also show that if G has totally disconnected unit space, then the associated complex *-algebra introduced by Steinberg is simple if and only if the interior of the isotropy subgroupoid of G is equal to the unit space and G is minimal.
We unify various étale groupoid reconstruction theorems such as: 1) Kumjian-Renault's reconstruction from a groupoid C*-algebra. 2) Exel's reconstruction from an ample inverse semigroup. 3) Steinberg's reconstruction from a groupoid ring. 4) Choi-Gardella-Thiel's reconstruction from a groupoid L^p-algebra. We do this by working with certain bumpy semigroups S of functions defined on an étale groupoid G. The semigroup structure of S together with the diagonal subsemigroup D then yields a natural domination relation < on S. The groupoid of <-ultrafilters is then isomorphic to the original groupo…
We examine a semigroup analogue of the Kumjian-Renault representation of C*-algebras with Cartan subalgebras on twisted groupoids. Specifically, we show how to represent semigroups with distinguished normal subsemigroups as `slice-sections' of groupoid bundles.
Given an action $φ$ of of inverse semigroup $S$ on a ring $A$ (with domain of $φ(s)$ 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 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.
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 which has the structure of an etale 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 etale groupoids and the class of complete and infinitely distributive inverse monoids equipped with suitable representations, and…
We extend to arbitrary commutative base rings a recent result of Demeneghi that every ideal of an ample groupoid algebra over a field is an intersection of kernels of induced representations from isotropy groups, with a much shorter proof, by using the author's Disintegration Theorem for groupoid representations. We also prove that every primitive ideal is the kernel of an induced representation from an isotropy group; however, we are unable to show, in general, that it is the kernel of an irreducible induced representation. If each isotropy group is finite (e.g., if the groupoid is principal)…
In this paper, we prove that the algebra of an étale groupoid with totally disconnected unit space has a simple algebra over a field if and only if the groupoid is minimal and effective and the only function of the algebra that vanishes on every open subset is the null function. Previous work on the subject required the groupoid to be also topologically principal in the non-Hausdorff case, but we do not. Furthermore, we provide the first examples of minimal and effective but not topologically principal étale groupoids with totally disconnected unit spaces. Our examples come from self-similar g…
This paper studies simplicity, primitivity and semiprimitivity of algebras associated to étale groupoids. Applications to inverse semigroup algebras are presented. The results also recover the semiprimitivity of Leavitt path algebras and can be used to recover the known primitivity criterion for Leavitt path algebras.
The author has previously associated to each commutative ring with unit $\Bbbk$ 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 …
We introduce a graded homology theory for graded étale groupoids. For $\mathbb Z$-graded groupoids, we establish an exact sequence relating the graded zeroth-homology to non-graded one. Specialising to the arbitrary graph groupoids, we prove that the graded zeroth homology group with constant coefficients $\mathbb Z$ is isomorphic to the graded Grothendieck group of the associated Leavitt path algebra. To do this, we consider the diagonal algebra of the Leavitt path algebra of the covering graph of the original graph and construct the group isomorphism directly. Considering the trivial grading…
We study growth and complexity of étale groupoids in relation to growth of their convolution algebras. As an application, we construct simple finitely generated algebras of arbitrary Gelfand-Kirillov dimension $\ge 2$ and simple finitely generated algebras of quadratic growth over arbitrary fields.
We provide three functorial extensions of the equivalence between localic etale groupoids and their quantales. The main result is a biequivalence between the bicategory of localic etale groupoids, with bi-actions as 1-cells, and a bicategory of inverse quantal frames whose 1-cells are bimodules. As a consequence, the category InvQuF of inverse quantale frames, whose morphisms are the (necessarily involutive) homomorphisms of unital quantales, is equivalent to a category of localic etale groupoids whose arrows are the algebraic morphisms in the sense of Buneci and Stachura. We also show that th…
We establish a close and previously unknown relation between quantales and groupoids, in terms of which the notion of etale groupoid is subsumed in a natural way by that of quantale. In particular, to each etale groupoid, either localic or topological, there is associated a unital involutive quantale. We obtain a bijective correspondence between localic etale groupoids and their quantales, which are given a rather simple characterization and are here called inverse quantal frames. We show that the category of inverse quantal frames is equivalent to the category of complete and infinitely distr…
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 Zelma…
For an arbitrary localic etale groupoid G we provide simple descriptions, in terms of modules over the quantale O(G) of the groupoid, of the continuous actions of G, including actions on open maps and sheaves. The category of G-actions is isomorphic to a corresponding category of O(G)-modules, and as a corollary we obtain a new quantale based representation of etendues.
