Coarse geometry of Hecke pairs and the Baum-Connes conjecture (Q6043340)

The Baum-Connes assembly map relates the \(K\)-theory of a reduced group \(C^*\)-algebra or, more generally, of a reduced crossed product for a group action to another invariant that may be computed using algebraic topology. For many groups \(G\), we already know that the Baum-Connes assembly map is an isomorphism for all \(G\)-actions. Then we say that \(G\) satisfies the Baum-Connes conjecture with coefficients. In particular, this is known for amenable groups and, more generally, groups that satisfy the Haagerup property, also called a-T-menable groups. The Baum-Connes conjecture is also known to be hereditary for many constructions with groups. An important permanence property concerns group extensions. This article extends this permanence property to the much more general setting of an almost normal subgroup in a countable discrete group, \(H < G\). The main theorem says that \(G\) satisfies the Baum-Connes conjecture with coefficients provided all subgroups of \(G\) that contain \(H\) as a finite index subgroup satisfy the Baum-Connes conjecture with coefficients, and \(H\) is co-Haagerup in \(G\); the latter means that there is a proper \(G\)-invariant kernel of conditionally negative type on \(G/H\). Another important result concerns the injectivity of the Baum-Connes assembly map. This is known for \(G\) whenever \(H\) and \(G/H\) admit coarse embeddings into a Hilbert space. These results are applied to examples coming from algebraic groups. The proofs use the coarse geometry of the quotient space \(G/H\). This space has bounded geometry if and only if \(H\) is almost normal in \(G\). Another ingredient is the Schlichting completion, which is a totally disconnected locally compact group \(G'\) with a compact-open subgroup \(H'<G'\) and a homomorphism \(G\to G'\) that induces a bijection \(G/H \cong G'/H'\).