Unitary representations of oligomorphic groups

Model theory of denumerable and separable structures (03C15) Infinite automorphism groups (20B27) Representations of general topological groups and semigroups (22A25)

Abstract: We obtain a complete classification of the continuous unitary representations of oligomorphic permutation groups (those include the infinite permutation group

S_{i} n f t y

, the automorphism group of the countable dense linear order, the homeomorphism group of the Cantor space, etc.). Our main result is that all irreducible representations of such groups are obtained by induction from representations of finite quotients of open subgroups and moreover, every representation is a sum of irreducibles. As an application, we prove that many oligomorphic groups have property (T). We also show that the Gelfand--Raikov theorem holds for topological subgroups of

S_{i} n f t y

: for all such groups, continuous irreducible representations separate points in the group.

Review text

The author studies unitary representations of certain classes of non-Archimedean groups; these are the separable groups having a countable basis of neighborhoods consisting of open subgroups, or, equivalently, the topological subgroups of the group \(\text{Perm}\mathbb Z\) of all permutations of the integers. It is shown that the Gelfand-Raikov theorem extends to all non-Archimedean groups \(G\), i.e., the continuous irreducible unitary representations separate the points of \(G\). An important subclass of the non-Archimedean groups is formed by the Roelcke precompact ones; \(G\) is said to be Roelcke precompact if for every neighborhood \(U\) of the identity, there is a finite set \(F\) such that \(G = UFU\). The main result asserts that for a Roelcke precompact subgroup \(G \leq \text{Perm}\mathbb Z\), every unitary representation of \(G\) is a sum of irreducible representations obtained by induction from irreducible representations \(\sigma\) of subgroups \(H\leq G\), where \(H\) is a commensurator and \(\sigma(H)\) is finite. The commensurator of \(K\leq G\) is the set of all \(g \in G\) such that \(K\cap K^g\) has finite index both in \(K\) and in \(K^g\). The next question is when a subgroup \(G \leq \text{Perm}\mathbb Z\) is Roelcke precompact. It is shown that this is the case iff \(G\) is an inverse limit of oligomorphic groups. In particular, oligomorphic subgroups \(G\) are Roelcke precompact. By definition, oligomorphic groups are the topological groups which can act effectively on a countable set \(X\) in such a way that the diagonal action on \(X^n\) has only finitely many orbits for each \(n\in \mathbb N\). Typical examples are the homeomorphism group of the Cantor space \(2^{\mathbb N}\), the automorphism group of the countable dense order \((\mathbb Q,<)\), and the group \(\text{Perm}\mathbb Z\) itself. More generally, examples for oligomorphic groups arise from model theory: a classical theorem of Ryll-Nardzewski, Engeler and Svenonius asserts that a countable structure is \(\omega\)-categorical (i.e., is determined up to isomorphism by its first-order theory) iff its automorphism group acts on it as an oligomorphic permutation group. As an application of the main result, it is shown that a large class of oligomorphic groups \(G\) have Kazhdan's property (T), i.e., there is a compact set \(Q \subseteq G\) and \(\varepsilon > 0\) such that every representation having a \((Q,\varepsilon)\)-invariant vector also has a properly invariant vector. For five examples (including those mentioned above) a Kazhdan set \(Q\) with only two elements is explicitly described.

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