On the analogue of Veech's theorem in the \(WAP\)-compactification of a locally compact group (Q1611021)

Let \(UG\) and \(WG\) denote the LUC- and the WAP-compactifications of a locally compact group \(G\). These are the semigroup compactifications of \(G\) that are obtained as the maximal ideal spaces of the algebras \(LUC(G)\) and WAP\((G)\) consisting of left uniformly continuous and weakly almost periodic functions respectively. Both spaces, \(UG\) and \(WG\) carry a natural semigroup multiplication extending the group multiplication of \(G\). The theorem of Veech that the title of the paper refers to was proven by \textit{W. A. Veech} [Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 83, 775-830 (1977; Zbl 0384.28018)] (see \textit{J. Pym} [Semigroup Forum 59, 171-174 (1999; Zbl 0980.22009)] for a shorter proof) and states that, with this multiplication, \(g\mu\neq \mu\) whenever \(e\neq g \in G\) and \(\mu \in UG\). The aim of the present paper is to study the analogue of this phenomenon when \(UG\) is replaced by \(WG\). The situation in this setting turns out to be substantially different from the \(UG\)-case and is in fact more diverse. While the analogue of Veech's theorem holds for MAP locally compact groups (locally compact groups whose finite dimensional representations separate points) because these groups have a compactification that is a quotient of \(WG\) (namely the almost periodic or Bohr compactification) and has group (not only semigroup) structure, the failure in general terms of the assertion \(g\mu=\mu \implies g=e\) ranges from dramatic in the case of simple Lie groups (here \(WG\) is the one-point compactification of \(G\) and \(g\mu=\mu g=\mu\) for every \(\mu \in WG\setminus G\) and \(g\in G\)) to mild in the case of SIN-groups (there is in this case a dense subset \(S\) of \(WG\setminus G\) such that, for \(\mu \in S\), \(g\mu=\mu \implies g=e\)).