Kazhdan's property (T) for the unitary group of a separable Hilbert space (Q1403364)

A topological group \(G\) has Kazhdan's property (T) if whenever a unitary representation \(\pi\) of \(G\) has almost invariant vectors, then \(\pi\) actually has a non-zero invariant vector. This is equivalent to the existence of some compact subset \(Q\) of \(G\) and \(\varepsilon> 0\) such that whenever there exists a unit vector \(\xi\) in the Hilbert space of \(\pi\) satisfying \(\|\pi(x)\xi- \xi\|\leq\varepsilon\) for all \(x\in Q\), then \(\pi\) has a non-zero invariant vector. In this case, \(Q\) is called a Kazhdan set and \(\varepsilon\) a Kazhdan constant. Property (T) was introduced by Kazhdan for locally compact groups and has applications in geometry, operator algebras and graph theory. Whereas the structure of finite-dimensional Lie groups with property (T) is well understood, the first examples of non-locally compact groups with property (T) have been found only a few years ago. In the paper under review the following remarkable result is shown. Let \({\mathcal H}\) be an infinite-dimensional separable Hilbert space and \(U({\mathcal H})\) the unitary group of \({\mathcal H}\) equipped with the strong operator topology. Then \(U({\mathcal H})\) has Kazhdan's property (T), and for every \(m\geq 2\) a Kazhdan set consisting of \(m\) unitary operators with optimal Kazhdan constant \((2-2{(2m- 1)^{1/2}\over m})^{1/2}\) can be constructed. The proof is based on the classification of the unitary irreducible representations of \(U({\mathcal H})\) due to Kirillov and Olshanski and on Kesten's formula for the spectral radius of the random walk on the Cayley graph of the free group on \(m\) generators. It is worth pointing out that, as shown by de la Harpe, \(U({\mathcal H})\) is amenable. Thus, in strong contrast to locally compact groups, a non-compact topological group may be amenable and nevertheless have property (T).