The second bounded cohomology of word-hyperbolic groups (Q1360147)

Let \(G\) be a word-hyperbolic group in the sense of Gromov. It is called elementary if its boundary contains fewer than three points. This is equivalent to \(G\) being virtually cyclic. If \(G\) is non-elementary its boundary is uncountable. Let \(H_b^2(G;\mathbb{R})\) and \(H_b^2(G;\mathbb{Z})\) respectively be the second bounded cohomology of \(G\), i.e. the second cohomology of the subcomplex of bounded cochains of the bar complex of \(G\) with coefficients in \(\mathbb{R}\) or \(\mathbb{Z}\) respectively. Let \(l^1\) be the Banach space of summable sequences of real numbers. Denote by \(e_i\in l^1\) the sequence whose entries are all zero except the \(i\)-th one which is 1. The main result of the paper is Theorem: Let \(G\) be a non-elementary word-hyperbolic group. Then there is an injective \(\mathbb{R}\)-linear map \(\omega:l^1\to H_b^2(G;\mathbb{R})\) such that for each \(1\leq i<\infty\) \(\omega(e_i)\) is the image of a class in \(H_b^2(G,\mathbb{Z})\). In particular, the dimension of \(H_b^2(G;\mathbb{R})\) as a real vector space is the cardinality of the continuum.