Almost, asymptotic and Fredholm representations of discrete groups (Q5953563)

An almost representation of a discrete group is a concept the study of which goes back to Halmos's and Voiculescu's paper from 1976 and 1983, respectively, it is a map from this group into the unitary group of a Hilbert space, such that the group relations hold only approximately. The study of these representations has recently been enriched by six papers by the present authors (1997-2000). This paper is a survey of these recent results on almost representations and their relations to asymptotic representations [see \textit{A. Connes} and \textit{N. Higgson}, C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, Sér. I 311, 101-106 (1990; Zbl 0717.46062)], Fredholm representation or, more generally, representation into the Calkin algebra. So, in the author's sense, the asymptotic representations are a particular case of representations into the Calkin algebra. Namely, the suspension over the asymptotic \(C^*\)-algebra is embedded into the Calkin algebra so that this embedding induces an isomorphism of the \(K\)-groups. This means that any asymptotic representation of a group \(\pi\) gives rise to a representation of the group \(\mathbb{Z}\times\pi\) into the Calkin algebra. As a corollary, the authors obtain that the vector bundles over the classifying space \(B\pi\), which can be obtained by asymptotic representations of a discrete group \(\pi\), can be also obtained by representations of the group \(\pi\times \mathbb{Z}\) into the Calkin algebra. A generalization of the notion of the Fredholm representations is given and the fact that the asymptotic representations can be viewed as asymptotic Fredholm representations is shown. On the other hand, an example of a group is given such that its asymptotic representations give much fewer vector bundles than its representations into the Calkin algebra.