Deformations of nilpotent groups and homotopy symmetric \(C^*\)-algebras (Q514342)

A separable \(C^*\)-algebra \(A\) is homotopy symmetric if its identity map is invertible in the semigroup \([[A,A\otimes\mathbb K]]\) of homotopy classes of asymptotic homomorphisms from \(A\) to \(A\otimes\mathbb K\), where \(\mathbb K\) is the \(C^*\)-algebra of compact operators. A new condition is found that characterizes homotopy symmetric nuclear \(C^*\)-algebras and passes to nuclear \(C^*\)-subalgebras. As a corollary, it is shown that, for a countable torsion free nilpotent group \(G\), the kernel \(I(G)\) of the trivial representation \(C^*(G)\to\mathbb C\) is homotopy symmetric, hence the Kasparov group \(KK(I(G),B)\) is isomorphic to \([[I(G),B\otimes\mathbb K]]\) for any separable \(C^*\)-algebra \(B\).