arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Adam Winchester.
We use malleable deformations combined with spectral gap rigidity theory, in the framework of Popa's deformation/rigidity theory to prove unique tensor product decomposition results for II$_1$ factors arising as tensor product of wreath product factors. We also obtain a similar result regarding measure equivalence decomposition of direct products of such groups.
We investigate the relationship between the metric boundary and the Gromov boundary of a hyperbolic metric space. We show that the Gromov boundary is a quotient topological space of the metric boundary, and that therefore a word-hyperbolic group has an amenable action on the metric boundary of its Cayley graph. This result has significance for the study of Lip-norms on group C*-algebras.
We provide a geometric condition which determines whether or not every point on the metric boundary of a graph with the standard path metric is a Busemann point, that is it is the limit point of a geodesic ray. We apply this and a related condition to investigate the structure of the metric boundary of Cayley graphs. We show that every metric boundary point of the Cayley graph of a finitely generated Abelian group is a Busemann point, but groups such as the braid group and the discrete Heisenberg group have boundary points of the Cayley graph which are not Busemann points when equipped with their usual generators.