Irreducibly represented groups (Q951968)

A group is said to be irreducibly represented if it has a faithful irreducible unitary representation. The class of irreducibly represented groups includes all groups for which the reduced (or the universal) group C*-algebra is primitive, and so the class includes all C*-simple groups (see \textit{G. J. Murphy} [Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 35, 697--705 (2003; Zbl 1060.46041)] and \textit{P. de la Harpe} [Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 39, 1--26 (2007; Zbl 1123.22004)] for accounts of primitivity and simplicity of group C*-algebras). A finite abelian group is irreducibly represented if and only if it is cyclic. The main result of the paper under review is a characterisation of irreducibly represented countable groups. It is immediate from the characterisation that, in particular, torsion-free groups and infinite conjugacy class groups are irreducibly represented. The paper is well written and interesting to read. Presenting the main results in detail requires some notation, to which we now turn. Let \(\Gamma\) be a countable group. A foot of \(\Gamma\) is a minimal normal subgroup of \(\Gamma\). Denote the collection of all finite feet of \(\Gamma\) by \(\mathcal F\), and partition \(\mathcal F\) into two subclasses \(\mathcal A\) and \(\mathcal H\), where \(\mathcal A\) consists of abelian groups and \(\mathcal H\) of non-abelian ones. Denote the subgroups generated by \(\bigcup \mathcal F\), \(\bigcup \mathcal A\) and \(\bigcup \mathcal H\) by \(\text{MS}(\Gamma)\), \(\text{MA}(\Gamma)\) and \(\text{MH}(\Gamma)\), respectively. The subgroup \(\text{MS}(\Gamma)\) is called the minisocle of \(\Gamma\), and it has a decomposition \(\text{MS}(\Gamma)=\text{MA}(\Gamma)\oplus\text{MH}(\Gamma)\). Moreover, \(\text{MA}(\Gamma) = \bigoplus_{i\in I} A_i\) for some subset \(\{A_i\}_{i\in I}\) of \(\mathcal A\), whereas \(\text{MH}(\Gamma) = \bigoplus_{H\in\mathcal H} H\). A representation \(\sigma\) of a normal subgroup \(N\) of \(\Gamma\) is said to be \(\Gamma\)-faithful if \(\bigcap_{\gamma\in\Gamma} \text{ker}\,\sigma^\gamma = \{e\}\), where \(e\) is the identity of \(\Gamma\) and \(\sigma^\gamma(n) = \sigma(\gamma n \gamma^{-1})\), \(n\in N\). The main result of the paper says that the following statements are equivalent: (i) \(\Gamma\) is irreducibly represented; (ii) \(\text{MA}(\Gamma)\) has a \(\Gamma\)-faithful character; (iii) \(\text{MS}(\Gamma)\) has a \(\Gamma\)-faithful irreducible representation; (iv) for every finite subset \(E\) of \(I\), there exists \(x\) in \(\text{MA}_E(\Gamma):= \bigoplus_{i\in E} A_i\) such that the \(\Gamma\)-conjugacy class of \(x\) generates \(\text{MA}_E(\Gamma)\); (v) for every pair of finite subsets \(E\subset I\) and \(F\subset\mathcal H\), there exists \(x\) in \(\text{MS}_{E,F}(\Gamma):= (\bigoplus_{i\in E} A_i)\oplus (\bigoplus_{H\in F} H)\) such that the \(\Gamma\)-conjugacy class of \(x\) generates \(\text{MS}_{E,F}(\Gamma)\). \textit{W. Gaschütz} [Math. Nachr. 12, 253--255 (1954; Zbl 0056.25703)] has shown the equivalence of (i), (iv) and (v) for finite groups. The authors also characterise those countable subgroups \(\Delta\) of the unitary group of a separable infinite-dimensional Hilbert space \(H\) for which the bicommutant \(\Delta''\) is all of \(B(H)\), the algebra of all bounded linear operators on \(H\). Indeed, a countable group \(\Gamma\) is isomorphic to such \(\Delta\) if and only if \(\Gamma\) has an \textit{infinite-dimensional} faithful irreducible unitary representation, and the authors show that the latter is true if and only if \(\Gamma\) is irreducibly represented (and so satisfies the conditions given above) and is not virtually abelian (i.e., \(\Gamma\) does not have an abelian subgroup of finite index).