Pairings, duality, amenability and bounded cohomology (Q713955)

Let \(G\) be a countable discrete group. In this paper, the authors give a short, unified proof of the Johnson-Ringrose theorem that \(G\) is amenable if and only if \(H_b^1( G, (\ell^{\infty}(G)/C)^* ) =0\) and the Block-Weinberger theorem that \(G\) is amenable if and only if \( H_0^{uf} \not=0\), where \(H_b^1( G, (\ell^{\infty}(G)/C)^* ) \) denotes the bounded cohomology with coefficients in the dual of \(\ell^{\infty}(G)/C\) and \( H_0^{uf} \) denotes the uniformly finite homology of Block and Weinberger. The technique of the proof is to exploit duality and the short exact sequence of coefficients \[ 0 \rightarrow C \buildrel {\iota} \over \rightarrow \ell^{\infty}(G) \buildrel {\pi} \over \rightarrow \ell^{\infty}(G)/C \rightarrow 0. \] The authors examine the interaction between the two theories which arises from a pairing between homology and cohomology. For a free group \(F_n\), a nonzero element of \(H_b^1( F_n, (\ell^{\infty}(F_n)/C)^* )\) is constructed.