On subgroups of minimal topological groups

DOI10.1016/J.TOPOL.2008.03.001MaRDI QIDQ935261zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 6 August 2008

Published in Topology and its Applications (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0004119

Abstract: A topological group is minimal if it does not admit a strictly coarser Hausdorff group topology. The Roelcke uniformity (or lower uniformity) on a topological group is the greatest lower bound of the left and right uniformities. A group is Roelcke-precompact if it is precompact with respect to the Roelcke uniformity. Many naturally arising non-Abelian topological groups are Roelcke-precompact and hence have a natural compactification. We use such compactifications to prove that some groups of isometries are minimal. In particular, if U_1 is the Urysohn universal metric space of diameter 1, the group Iso(U_1) of all self-isometries of U_1 is Roelcke-precompact, topologically simple and minimal. We also show that every topological group is a subgroup of a minimal topologically simple Roelcke-precompact group of the form Iso(M), where M is an appropriate non-separable version of the Urysohn space.

Review text

In this extraordinarily interesting paper which contains abundant material, the author answers two questions, namely: Pestov, Arhangelskii 1980: What are the subgroups of minimal topological groups? Roelcke 1990: What are the subgroups of lower precompact topological groups? The author shows that every topological group \(G\) is isomorphic to a subgroup of a complete minimal group which is Roelcke-precompact, topologically simple and has the same weight as \(G\). A Hausdorff group is called \textit{minimal} if there exists no strictly coarser Hausdorff group topology. The greatest bound for the left and the right uniformity \({\mathcal L}\wedge{\mathcal R}\) on a topological group is called \textit{lower uniformity} or \textit{Roelcke uniformity}. The proof of this deep and fundamental theorem is given in two steps. In the first the author proves that every topological group \(G\) is isomorphic to a subgroup of \( Iso(M)\) where \(M\) is a complete metrizable \(\omega\)-homogeneous Urysohn space of the same weight as \(G\). In the case that \(G\) is second countable, \(M\) is the Urysohn universal metric space \({\mathbb U}_1\) which is characterized by the following two properties: it contains an isometric copy of every separable metric space of diameter \(\leq 1\) and it is \(\omega\)-homogeneous. In the case that \(G\) has uncountable weight, the proof is much harder and makes use of Katětov functions and Graev metrics on free topological groups. In the second step Uspenskij shows that the group \( Iso(M)\) where \(M\) is an \(\omega\)-homogeneous Urysohn complete metric space is Roelcke-precompact, minimal, and topologically simple. The weight of \(Iso(M)\) is equal to the weight of \(M\). This is done by describing explicitly the Roelcke compactification of this group. It can be identified with the so called bi-Katětov functions \(M\times M\to [0,1]\) which form an involutive ordered semigroup. Deep insight in the structure of this semigroup is given.

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