Free products, orbit equivalence and measure equivalence rigidity (Q763709)

Summary: We study the analogue, in orbit equivalence, of free product decompositions and free indecomposability for countable groups. We introduce the (orbit equivalence invariant) notion of freely indecomposable (\(\mathcal {FI}\)) standard probability measure preserving equivalence relations and establish a criterion to check it, namely non-hyperfiniteness and vanishing of the first \(L^2\)-Betti number. We obtain Bass-Serre rigidity results, i.e. forms of uniqueness in free product decompositions of equivalence relations with (\(\mathcal {FI}\)) components. The main features of our work are weak algebraic assumptions and no ergodicity hypothesis for the components. We deduce, for instance, that a measure equivalence between two free products of non-amenable groups with vanishing first \(\ell^2\)-Betti numbers is induced by measure equivalences of the components. We also deduce new classification results in orbit equivalence and II\(_1\) factors.