Structure properties and real continuous bounded 2-cohomology of locally compact groups (Q5959526)

The paper under review studies spaces of real pseudocharacters on locally compact groups and the continuous bounded cohomology of these groups. For any connected locally compact group \(G\), the vector space \(QP(G)\) obtained as the quotient of the space of all continuous real pseudocharacters by the space of (ordinary) continuous real characters, and the second van Est real cohomology group \(\widehat H^2(G)\) (corresponding to the trivial action of \(G\) on the reals) are described. It is shown that the spaces \(QP(G)\) and \(\widehat H^2(G)\) have finite dimension whenever \(G\) is an almost connected locally compact group. The paper also reviews and refines well known results about maximal compact normal subgroups in (almost connected) locally compact groups.