Irreducible Koopman representations for nonsingular actions on boundaries of rooted trees

Abstract

Let $G$ be a countable branch group of automorphisms of a spherically homogeneous rooted tree. Under some assumption on finitarity of $G$, we construct, for each sequence $\omega\in\{0,1\}^\Bbb N$, an irreducible unitary representation $\kappa_\omega$ of $G$. Every two representations $\kappa_\omega$ and $\kappa_{\omega'}$ are weakly equivalent. They are unitarily equivalent if and only if $\omega$ and $\omega'$ are tail equivalent. Each $\kappa_\omega$ appears as the Koopman representation associated with some ergodic $G$-quasiinvariant measure (of infinite product type) on the boundary of the tree.