Amenability, connected components, and definable actions

Abstract

We study amenability of definable and topological groups. Among our main technical tools is an elaboration on and strengthening of the Massicot-Wagner version of the stabilizer theorem, and some results around measures. As an application we show that if $G$ is an amenable topological group, then the Bohr compactification of $G$ coincides with a certain "weak Bohr compactification" introduced in [24]. Formally, $G^{00}_{topo} = G^{000}_{topo}$. We also prove wide generalizations of this result, implying in particular its extension to a "definable-topological" context, confirming the main conjectures from [24]. We introduce $\bigvee$-definable group topologies on a given $\emptyset$-definable group $G$ (including group topologies induced by type-definable subgroups as well as uniformly definable group topologies), and prove that the existence of a mean on the lattice of closed, type-definable subsets of $G$ implies (under some assumption) that $cl(G^{00}_M) = cl(G^{000}_M)$ for any model $M$. We study the relationship between definability of an action of a definable group on a compact space, weakly almost periodic actions, and stability. We conclude that for any group $G$ definable in a sufficiently saturated structure, every definable action of $G$ on a compact space supports a $G$-invariant probability measure. This gives negative solutions to some questions and conjectures from [22] and [24]. We give an example of a $\emptyset$-definable approximate subgroup $X$ in a saturated extension of the group $\mathbb{F}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}$ in a suitable language for which the $\bigvee$-definable group $H:=\langle X \rangle$ contains no type-definable subgroup of bounded index. This refutes a conjecture by Wagner and shows that the Massicot-Wagner approach to prove that a locally compact "model" exists for each approximate subgroup does not work in general.