Induced characters, Mackey analysis and primitive ideal spaces of nilpotent discrete groups (Q860784)

Given a nilpotent discrete group~\(G\), let \(\text{Prim}(C^*(G))\) be the space of primitive ideals of the group \(C^*\)-algebra \(C^*(G)\). Let \(\text{Tr}(G)\) be the set of traces on~\(G\), i.e., normalized positive definite functions~\(\phi\) on~\(G\) which are central in the sense that \(\phi(xyx^{-1})=\phi(y)\) for all \(x,y\in G\). Furthermore, let \(\text{Ch}(G)\) be the set of characters of~\(G\), i.e., extreme points of the convex set~\(\text{Tr}(G)\). The paper under review establishes a description of the hull-kernel topology on \(\text{Prim}(C^*(G))\) in terms of a topology on a certain parameter space, in the cases where~\(G\) is finitely generated or an AIC-group (meaning that each character \(\phi\) is absolutely idempotent in the sense that \(| \phi| ^2=| \phi| \)). In both cases, \(\text{Prim}(C^*(G))\) is known to be homeomorphic to~\(\text{Ch}(G)\) with the facial topology, whence the problem is equivalent to a parametrization of~\(\text{Ch}(G)\). As a tool, the author associates a certain induced trace \(\text{ind}_H^G(\phi)\) to each subgroup~\(H\) of~\(G\) and trace~\(\phi\) on~\(H\). If a nilpotent group~\(G\) is finitely generated or an AIC-group, then~\(G\) is centrally inductive; for a nilpotent group, this means that each character of~\(G\) is induced from a multiplicative character of some subgroup of~\(G\). It is therefore natural to try to parametrize \(\text{Ch}(G)\) by a suitable set of pairs \((H,\phi)\), where \(H\) is a subgroup of~\(G\) and~\(\phi\) a character of~\(H\) such that \(\text{ind}_H^G(\phi)\) is a character of~\(G\). The author introduces a topology on the set \({\mathcal Q}(G)\) of such pairs with~\(H\) normal. In the case where \(G\) is an AIC-group, he describes a subset \({\mathcal P}(G)\) of \({\mathcal Q}(G)\) such that \({\mathcal P}(G)\to \text{Ch}(G)\), \((H,\phi)\mapsto \text{ind}_H^G(\phi)\) is a homeomorphism. In the case where \(G\) is finitely generated, he explicitly describes a subset \({\mathcal P}(G)\) of \({\mathcal Q}(G)\) and an equivalence relation~\(\sim\) thereon such that \({\mathcal P}(G)/\sim\) is homeomorphic to \(\text{Ch}(G)\). We mention that the class of nilpotent AIC-groups subsumes all divisible nilpotent groups and all 2-step nilpotent groups. For 2-step nilpotent locally compact groups, a parametrization of \(\text{Prim}(C^*(G))\) via certain group-character pairs was given earlier by \textit{L. Baggett} and \textit{J. Packer} [J. Funct.\ Anal.\ 124, 389-426 (1994; Zbl 0820.22004)].