Quasi-actions and generalised Cayley-Abels graphs of locally compact groups (Q486449)

The rough Cayley graph of a topological group was studied by \textit{B. Krön} and \textit{R. G. Möller} [Math. Z. 258, No. 3, 637--675 (2008; Zbl 1134.22003)], where it is defined as a connected graph such that the group acts transitively on the set of vertices and the stabilizers of the vertices are compact open subgroups. Every compactly generated totally disconnected locally compact group \(G\) has a locally finite rough Cayley graph; its vertex set can be realized as the homogeneous space \(G/U\) where \(U\) is a compact open subgroup. The construction goes back to \textit{H. Abels} [Math. Z. 135, 325--361 (1974; Zbl 0275.22011)] but was also discovered by \textit{R. G. Möller} [Math. Scand. 92, No. 2, 261--268 (2003; Zbl 1132.22002)] and \textit{N. Monod} [Continuous bounded cohomology of locally compact groups. Berlin: Springer (2001; Zbl 0967.22006)]. These objects are referred to as Cayley-Abels graphs. The purpose of the paper under review is to generalize the notion of Cayley-Abels graph to the case of compactly generated locally compact groups. A uniformly locally finite connected graph \(X\) is called a generalized Cayley-Abels graph of \(G\) if \(G\) admits a proper cobounded quasi-action on \(X\). Such graphs are meant to encode the large-scale information of \(G\). Using quasi-lattices, the author constructs a generalized Cayley-Abels graph for any compactly generated locally compact group and establishes uniqueness up to quasi-isometry. The Cayley-Abels graph from the totally disconnected case fit in this framework and further examples are given. For instance, the Cayley graph of a cocompact lattice in a compactly generated group is the generalized Cayley-Abels graph of the ambient group. The example of the affine group of the real line is also treated. Some applications are given: it is shown that the growth of a compactly generated group can be described in terms of the growth of its generalized Cayley-Abels graph. Moreover, it is proved that if the group is unimodular, then it is amenable if and only if its generalized Cayley-Abels graph is amenable as a metric space. The example of the affine group shows that the unimodularity assumption cannot be dropped in this statement.