An amenability-like property of finite energy path and loop groups

DOI10.5802/CRMATH.134MaRDI QIDQ2223429zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Vladimir G. Pestov

Publication date 29 January 2021

Published in Comptes Rendus. Mathématique. Académie des Sciences, Paris (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.00344

zbMATH Keywords

amenability invariant vacuum mean skew-amenability

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Loop groups and related constructions, group-theoretic treatment (22E67) Means on groups, semigroups, etc.; amenable groups (43A07) Infinite-dimensional groups and algebras motivated by physics, including Virasoro, Kac-Moody, (W)-algebras and other current algebras and their representations (81R10)

Abstract: We show that the groups of finite energy loops and paths (that is, those of Sobolev class

H^{1}

) with values in a compact connected Lie group, as well as their central extensions, satisfy an amenability-like property: they admit a left-invariant mean on the space of bounded functions uniformly continuous with regard to a left-invariant metric. Every strongly continuous unitary representation

p i

of such a group (which we call skew-amenable) has a conjugation-invariant state on

B ({m a t h c a l H}_{p i})

.

Review text

By [\textit{P. de la Harpe}, Lect. Notes Math. 725, 220--227 (1979; Zbl 0402.46037)], a topological group $G$ is called amenable if every continuous action of $G$ on a compact space admits an invariant regular Borel probability measure. Equivalently, the space $RUCB(G)$ of bounded right uniformly continuous functions on $G$ admits a left-invariant mean. Also, in the paper under review, according to a suggestion by Martin Schneider, the authors call a topological group $G$ admitting a left-invariant mean on the space $LUCB(G)$, skew-amenable. In [\textit{A.~Carey} and \textit{H.~Grundling}, Lett. Math. Phys. 68, No.~2, 113--120 (2004; Zbl 1079.43003], the question is raised that if for a compact Riemannian manifold $X$, the groups $C^k (X,\mathrm{SU}(n)),$ $C^\infty(X,\mathrm{SU}(n)),$ and $H^k (X,\mathrm{SU}(n))$ with their natural group topologies are amenable. Also, there is an example of the group of gauge transformations ($C_0 (I,\mathrm{SU}(n)$) with the relative weak topology, where $I = [0, 1]$) which is not only amenable, but skew-amenable as well. By considering the above open question, and the mentioned example, the paper under review aims to study groups of finite energy paths and loops (those of Sobolev class $H^1 = W^1_ 2$, strictly intermediate between $C^ 0$ and $C^1$). Indeed, as a main result, the authors show that for a compact connected Lie group $K$, the topological groups of finite energy paths $H^1 (I,K),$ loops $H^1 (S^1 ,K),$ based paths $H^1_0 (I,K) $, and based loops $H^1_0 (S^1 ,K),$ as well as their central extensions, admit a left-invariant mean on the space of left uniformly continuous bounded functions. Also, the authors raise the following question that if for a compact Lie group $K$, and a principal smooth $K$-fibre bundle $P$, the groups of vertical automorphisms of $P$ of classes $C^k$, $H^k$, $k \geq 0,$ and $C^\infty$ with the corresponding topologies are skew-amenable.

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