Boundary representations of locally compact hyperbolic groups (Q6887623)

The paper develops a general theory of Patterson-Sullivan measures for second countable locally compact hyperbolic groups and studies the associated Koopman representations on the Gromov boundary. For a left invariant hyperbolic metric quasi-isometric to a word metric, the author constructs a canonical quasi-conformal measure class on the boundary and considers the corresponding unitary boundary representation.\N\NThe main result shows that, for unimodular nonelementary groups, the resulting boundary representation is irreducible. A second theorem establishes a rigidity statement: two such representations are unitarily equivalent if and only if the underlying metrics are roughly similar, providing a precise classification of Patterson-Sullivan representations in this setting. These results extend earlier work of \textit{U.~Bader} and \textit{R.~Muchnik} [J. Mod. Dyn. 5, No. 1, 49-69 (2011; Zbl 1259.46051)] and of \textit{Ł.~Garncarek} [``Boundary representations of hyperbolic groups'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1404.0903}], from discrete to locally compact groups.\N\NFurther applications include a characterization of type~I hyperbolic locally compact groups and a classification of those admitting Gelfand pairs. The paper also introduces an analogue of the Bowen-Margulis-Sullivan measure on the space of pairs of boundary points and proves a double ergodicity result using a measurable geodesic flow.