Compactness in dual spaces of locally compact groups and tensor products of irreducible representations (Q1090776)

The author investigates the connection between the compactness of supports of tensor products of irreducible representations of locally compact groups and the structure of these groups. The main result states that for an almost connected group G the following 3 conditions are equivalent (Theorem 2.6): (i) supp \(\Pi\otimes \Omega\) is compact for all compact subsets \(\Omega\) and \(\Pi\) of \(\hat G\); (ii) supp\(\pi \otimes \pi\) is compact for all \(\pi\in \hat G_ r;\) (iii) G contains a subgroup of finite index of the form \(V\times K\), where K is a compact group, V a vector group and both are normal in G. An immediate consequence of this theorem is that an infinite almost connected group cannot have a compact reduced dual. The author studies also the continuity problem of the support of tensor products of irreducible representations. He shows that for an amenable group G containing a compact normal subgroup K such that \(G/K\) is a Lie group the following 3 conditions are equivalent (Theorem 3.1): (i) \(G\in [FC]^-;\) (ii) the mapping \((\pi,\rho)\to \sup p \pi \otimes \rho\) from \(\hat G \times \hat G\) into \({\mathcal K}(G)\) is continuous; (iii) the mapping \(\pi\to \sup p \pi \otimes \pi\) from \(\hat G\) into \({\mathcal K}(G)\) is continuous at \(1_ G.\) (\({\mathcal K}(G)\) denotes the space of all closed subsets of G, carrying Fell's topology.)