Amenability and acyclicity in bounded cohomology (Q6118211)

Summary: Johnson's characterization of amenable groups states that a discrete group \(\Gamma\) is amenable if and only if \(H_{b}^{n \geq 1} (\Gamma; V) = 0\) for all dual normed \(\mathbb{R} [\Gamma]\)-modules \(V\). In this paper, we extend the previous result to homomorphisms by proving the converse of the \textit{mapping theorem}: a surjective group homomorphism \(\varphi : \Gamma \to K\) has amenable kernel \(H\) if and only if the induced inflation map \(H_{b}^{\bullet} (K; V^{H}) \to H_{b}^{\bullet} (\Gamma; V)\) is an isometric isomorphism for every dual normed \(\mathbb{R} [\Gamma]\)-module \(V\). In addition, we obtain an analogous characterization for the (smaller) class of surjective group homomorphisms \(\varphi : \Gamma \to K\) with the property that the inflation maps in bounded cohomology are isometric isomorphisms for \textit{all} Banach \(\Gamma\)-modules. Finally, we also prove a characterization of the (larger) class of \textit{boundedly acyclic} homomorphisms, that is, the class of group homomorphisms \(\varphi : \Gamma \to K\) for which the restriction maps in bounded cohomology \(H_{b}^{\bullet} (K; V) \to H_{b}^{\bullet} (\Gamma; \varphi^{-1} V)\) are isomorphisms for a suitable family of dual normed \(\mathbb{R}[K]\)-modules \(V\) including the trivial \(\mathbb{R}[K]\)-module \(\mathbb{R}\). We then extend the first and third results to topological spaces and obtain characterizations of \textit{amenable} maps and \textit{boundedly acyclic} maps in terms of the vanishing of the bounded cohomology of their homotopy fibers with respect to appropriate choices of coefficients.