Total minimality of the unitary groups (Q786949)

The main purpose of the paper is to show that the unitary group of everey real or complex Hilbert space provided with the weak topology is a totally minimal topological group ( a Hausdorff topological group \(G\) is said to be minimal if it does not admit a strictly coarser Hausdorff group topology, and \(G\) is called totally minimal if \(G/N\) is minimal for every closed normal subgroup \(N\) of \(G\)). The proof is based on a description of all equivariant (with respect to the action of the unitary group) compactifications of the unit sphere of an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, and follows the scheme of the proof of a result of \textit{S. Dierolf} and \textit{U. Schwanengel} [Bull. Sci. Math., II. Sér. 101, 265--269 (1977; Zbl 0375.22001)].