Weak containment and tensor products of group representations. II (Q791685)

Let G be a locally compact group and \(\hat G\) the dual space of G, i.e. the set of equivalence classes of irreducible representations of G equipped with the Jacobson topology. For any unitary representation \(\pi\) of G, the support of \(\pi\) is the closed set of all \(\rho\in \hat G\) which are weakly contained in \(\pi\). In this paper the author continues his previous studies [''Weak containment und tensor products of group representations,'' Math. Z. 180, 107-117 (1982; Zbl 0487.22004)] of problems related to supports of tensor products of representations. For a fixed irreducible representation \(\pi\) of G, consider the following property: \((TP)_{\pi}:\) For all \(\rho\in \hat G: 1_ G\in \sup p \pi \otimes {\bar \rho}\Leftrightarrow \sup p \pi \cap \sup p \rho \neq \emptyset\). J. M. G. Fell has shown that \((TP)_{\pi}\) holds if \(\pi\) finite dimensional, but that for certain \(\pi (TP)_{\pi}\) fails in the case of the motion group \({\mathbb{R}}^ 3\). The author gives, for arbitrary motion groups G and \(\pi\in \hat G\), an if and only if condition for \((TP)_{\pi}\) to hold. If G is a simply connected nilpotent Lie group, then by a very nice result due to \textit{R. Felix} [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 86, 151-152 (1982; Zbl 0494.22006)] \((TP)_{\pi}\) holds for \(\pi\in \hat G\) iff the Kirillov orbit of \(\pi\) is affine. On the other hand, it is shown in this paper that \((TP)_{\pi}\) holds for every \(\pi\in \hat G\), when G is a polynomially growing discrete group. Next, let \({\mathcal K}(\hat G)\) denote the space of all closed subsets of \(\hat G\) endowed with Fell's topology. It is expected that, at least for amenable Lie groups G, the mapping (\(\pi\),\(\rho)\to \sup p \pi \otimes \rho\) from \(\hat G\times \hat G\) into \({\mathcal K}(\hat G)\) is continuous if and only if G is a group with relatively compact conjugacy classes. Partial results in this direction are obtained. The final problem studied in this paper is that of describing the closed subduals of \(\hat G\), where by definition \(\Gamma\subseteq \hat G\) is called a subdual if \(1_ G\in \Gamma\) and \(\pi\),\(\rho\in \Gamma\) imply \({\bar \pi}\in \Gamma\) and supp \(\pi\otimes \rho \subseteq \Gamma\). Let us say that (S) holds for G if every closed subdual is the dual of a quotient of G. By a recent result of J. Boidol (yet unpublished) *-regular groups satisfy (S). The author proves (S) for a large class of locally compact groups, including all almost connected amenable groups.