Amalgamated free products of weakly rigid factors and calculation of their symmetry groups (Q926022)

The paper is devoted to rigidity results for amalgamated free product (so called AFP) \(\text{II}_1\) factors \(M=M_{1^*B}M_2\), which can be viewed as von Neumann algebra versions of the ``subgroup theorems'' and ``isomorphism theorems'' for AFP groups in Bass-Serre theory. The main ``subalgebra theorem'' shows that, under rather general conditions, any von Neumann subalgebra \(Q \subset M\) with the relative property (T) can be conjugated by an inner automorphism of \(M\) into either \(M_1\) or \(M_2\). The authors derive several ``isomorphism theorems'' in the case the amalgamation is over the scalars, \(B=\mathbb{C}\), over a common Cartan subalgebra, \(B=A\), or over a regular hyperfinite subfactor, \(B=R\). The typical such statement shows that if \(\theta:M \simeq N^t\) is an isomorphism from an AFP factor \(M=M_{1^*B}M_{2^*B \cdots^*B}M_m\) onto the amplification by some \(t>0\) of an AFP factor \(N=N_{1^*C}N_{2^*C \cdots^*C}N_n, \;1 \leq m, n \leq \infty\), with each \(M_i\) and each \(N_j\) containing a ``large'' subalgebra with the relative property (T), then \(m=n\) and \(\theta(B \subset M_i)\) is unitarily conjugate to \((C \subset N_i)^t\), for all \(i\), after some permutation of indices. When applied to the case \(B=\mathbb R\), these results allow to obtain the first explicit calculations of outer automorphism groups of \(\text{II}_1\) factors, and answer in the affirmative a problem posed by A. Connes in 1973 on whether there exist \(\text{II}_1\) factors \(M\) with no outer automorphism, i.e., with \(\text{Out}(M) =\text{Aut}(M)/\text{Int}(M)=\{1\}\). When applied to the case of amalgamated free products over a common Cartan subalgebra, the ``isomorphism theorem'' provides a Bass-Serre type result for orbit equivalence (OE) of actions of free product groups \[ \Gamma=\Gamma_1*\dots*\Gamma_n \text{ and } \Lambda=\Lambda_1*\dots*\Lambda_m \] on a probability space. Finally, when applied to the case \(B=\mathbb{C}\), the results become von Neumann algebra analogues of Kurosh's classical theorems for free products of groups, similar to Ozawa's recent results of this type, but covering a different class of factors and allowing amplifications.