Turbulence, orbit equivalence, and the classification of nuclear \(C^*\)-algebras (Q2450173)

From a descriptive set theoretic point of view, a classification problem is a pair \((X,E)\) consisting of a standard Borel space \(X\), the objects to be classified, and an equivalence relation \(E\). For classification problems \((X,E)\) and \((Y,F)\), a Borel reduction of \(E\) to \(F\) is a Borel map \(f:X\to Y\) such that \(xEy\) iff \(f(x)Ff(y)\). The main result of the paper discusses the complexity of the isomorphism relation for unital simple separable nuclear \(C^*\)-algebras. It is shown that, on the one hand, it is not classifiable by countable structures; on the other hand, it is Borel reducible to the orbit equivalence relation of a Polish group action, namely, the action of \(\text{Aut}(\mathcal O_2)\) on the closed subsets of the Cuntz algebra \(\mathcal O_2\).