Free group actions from the viewpoint of dynamical systems (Q2869227)

The origin of this paper is the question of whether there is a way to translate the geometric concept of principal bundles to noncommutative differential geometry. A dynamical system is a triple \((A,G,\alpha)\), consisting of a unital locally convex algebra \(A\), a topological group \(G\) and a group homomorphism \(\alpha : G\to\Aut(A)\), which induces a continuous action of \(G\) on \(A\). The author presents a new characterization of free group actions in classical differential geometry, involving dynamical systems and representations of the corresponding transformation groups. Given a dynamical system \((A,G,\alpha)\), he provides conditions including the existence of sufficiently many representations of \(G\) which ensure that the corresponding action NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\sigma:\Gamma_A\times G\to\Gamma_A,\quad (\chi,g)\mapsto\chi\circ \alpha(g),NEWLINE\]NEWLINE of \(G\) on the spectrum \(\Gamma_A\) of \(A\) is free. In particular, the case of compact abelian groups is discussed very carefully and involves an application to the noncommutative geometry of principal torus bundles. The paper is supported by an appendix which contains some information about properties of the spectrum of the algebra of smooth functions on a manifold.