Uniformly bounded representations and exact groups (Q2452463)

\textit{G. Yu} introduced an important property of metric spaces in [Invent. Math. 139, No. 1, 201--240 (2000; Zbl 0956.19004)]. This (so-called) property A is a weak version of amenability. Property A has turned out to be of significance in several areas of geometry. This property is preserved by quasi-isometries. An interesting example of a metric space is a finitely generated group under the word length metric with respect to a finite generating set. It is not only the amenable groups which satisfy property A but nonamenable groups like free groups also satisfy property A. A discrete metric space \(X\) is said to have property A if, for every \(\epsilon > 0\) and every \(R>0\), there is a family \(\{A_x\}_{x \in X}\) of finite subsets of \(X \times \mathbb{N}\) and a number \(S>0\) such that (i) \(\frac{|A_x \Delta A_y|}{|A_x \cap A_y|}< \epsilon\) whenever \(|x-y| \leq R\); (ii) \(A_x \subseteq B(x,S) \times \mathbb{N}\) for every \(x \in X\). \noindent If the criterion due to Folner for amenability of a group is generalized to a non-equivariant setting, it becomes property A. Property A implies coarse embeddability of a group into a Hilbert space. The above-mentioned paper of Yu proves - among other things - that Novikov's conjecture holds good for all closed manifolds whose fundamental groups satisfy property A. \noindent Many linear groups which have Kazhdan's property T possess property A. Recall that property T refers to the isolatedness of the trivial representation in the space of equivalence classes of all unitary representations. Contrastingly, amenability entails that the constant function \(1\) can be approximated by diagonal, finitely supported coefficients of the regular representation on \(L^2\) of the group. In this context, the authors prove the following interesting characterization of property A for groups. Let \(G\) be a finitely generated group equipped with the word length metric. Then, \(G\) has property A if and only if, for every \(\epsilon > 0\), there exists a uniformly bounded representation \(\pi\) of \(G\) on a Hilbert space \(H\), a vector \(v \in H\) and a constant \(S>0\) such that (i) \(||\pi(g)(v)|| = 1\) for all \(g \in G\); (ii) \(|1- <\pi(g)(v),\pi(h)(v)>| \leq \epsilon\) if \(|g^{-1}h| \leq 1\); (iii) \(<\pi(g)(v),\pi(g)(v)> = 0\) if \(|g^{-1}h| \geq S\). The authors raise the following interesting natural question: Are there finitely generated groups satisfying a sufficiently strong version of Kazhdan's property T for uniformly bounded representations, so that these groups cannot have property A?