A new family of representations of virtually free groups (Q1955694)

In the article under review, so-called multiplicative representations of virtually free groups are introduced. For a finitely generated free group a so-called multiplicative representation is defined in the following way. To every element of the finite symmetric set of generators a complex vector space and to every pair of generators a linear map between the corresponding spaces is assigned. Functions from the free group to the disjoint union of these vector spaces are considered such that the values of this map at a reduced word outside a ball of a certain radius are related among each other by applications of these linear maps. These functions are called multiplicative. Then the space of equivalence classes of such functions which differ only by finitely many values are considered. An inner product is then defined depending on a radius that is large enough and on positive definite sesquilinear forms of the corresponding spaces that have to satisfy a certain compatibility condition. The space of equivalence classes is then completed with respect to this inner product. Left translation on this space then defines a representation called multiplicative. This class of representations is closed under change of generators, restriction, induction, and even invariant under the action of the automorphism group. The multiplicative representations of a virtually free group are those which are equivalent to a subrepresentation of an induced multiplicative representation of a free group of finite index. This is also invariant under the action of the automorphism group. It is shown that every representation of this class is weakly contained in the regular representation and that they are restrictions of representations of the crossed product of the group with the C*-algebra of continuous complex-valued functions on the boundary of the Cayley graph.