On Rigidity of Roe algebras

Abstract

Roe algebras are C*-algebras built using large-scale (or 'coarse') aspects of a metric space (X,d). In the special case that X=G is a finitely generated group and d is a word metric, the simplest Roe algebra associated to (G,d) is isomorphic to the reduced crossed product C*-algebra l^\infty(G)\rtimes G. Roe algebras are 'coarse invariants', in the sense that if X and Y are coarsely equivalent metric spaces, then their Roe algebras are isomorphic. Motivated in part by the coarse Baum-Connes conjecture, we ask if there is a converse to the above statement: that is, if X and Y are metric spaces with isomorphic Roe algebras, must X and Y be coarsely equivalent? We show that for very large classes of spaces the answer to this question, and some related questions, is 'yes'. This can be thought of as a 'C*-rigidity result': it shows that the Roe algebra construction preserves a large amount of information about the space, and is thus surprisingly 'rigid'. As an example of our results, in the group case we have that if G and H are finitely generated elementary amenable, hyperbolic, or linear, groups such that the crossed products l^\infty(G)\rtimes G and l^\infty(H)\rtimes H are isomorphic, then G and H are quasi-isometric.