No label defined (Q4713461)

Several authors have investigated the question under which conditions a locally compact group \(G\) has a \(T_ 1\) primitive ideal space \(\hbox {Prim}(G)\). A complete answer was given by Moore and Rosenberg for connected \(G\). In case \(G\) is an amenable and countable discrete group they have shown that, if \(\hbox {Prim}(G)\) is a \(T_ 1\) space, then \(G\) must be \(FC\)-hypercentral. Note that \(G\) is called \(FC\)-hypercentral, if \(G\) is the limit of the ascending \(FC\)-series \((G_ \alpha)_ \alpha\) defined by \(G_ 0=\{e\}\), \(G_ \alpha=\bigcup_{\beta<\alpha}G_ \beta\) if \(\alpha\) is a limit ordinary number, and \(G_ \alpha/G_ \beta=(G/G_ \beta)_ F\) if \(\alpha=\beta+1\). Here, for a discrete group \(G\), \(G_ F\) denotes the union of all finite conjugacy classes in \(G\). Our first purpose for writing this paper is to demonstrate that every \(FC\)-hypercentral group has a \(T_ 1\) primitive ideal space. But it turns out that even more is true. Recall that, if a locally compact group \(G\) acts strongly continuous by *-automorphisms on a \(C^*\)-algebra \(A\), then one can form the crossed produced algebra \(C^*(G,A)\) of the covariant system \((G,a)\). Our main result is the following: Theorem. Let \((G,A)\) be a covariant system, and \(N\) an open normal subgroup of \(G\) such that \(G/N\) is \(FC\)-hypercentral. Then a closed prime ideal \(J\) in \(C^*(G,A)\) is maximal whenever the restriction of \(J\) to \(C^*(N,A)\) is a maximal \(G\)-invariant closed ideal in \(C^*(N,A)\). An easy corollary of this theorem is the fact that, for an amenable discrete group \(G\), every closed prime ideal in \(C^*(G)\) is maximal if and only if \(G\) is \(FC\)-hypercentral. This result will be extended to polynomially growing Lie groups with nilpotent connected component of the identity and to \([IN]\)-groups. The latter are locally compact groups containing an invariant compact neighbourhood of the identity. But we obtain also some interesting results for twisted covariant system \((G,A,\tau_ N)\) as defined by Green. We prove our main theorem by transfinite induction on the ascending \(FC\)-series of \(G/N\). For this we reduce the induction step from \(\alpha\) to \(\alpha+1\) to a ``central step'' and a ``finite step''.