arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Izhar Oppenheim.
We prove that random groups in the Gromov density model (under a certain divisibility condition) have property (T) asymptotically almost surely for any density $d > \frac{1}{4}$. This established $\frac{1}{4}$ as the threshold for property (T), since it was shown by Ashcroft that they do not have property (T) for $d < \frac{1}{4}$.
Cosystolic expansion is a high-dimensional generalization of the Cheeger constant for simplicial complexes. Originally, this notion was motivated by the fact that it implies the topological overlapping property, but more recently it was shown to be connected to problems in theoretical computer science such as list agreement expansion and agreement expansion in the low soundness regime. There are only a few constructions of high-dimensional cosystolic expanders and, in dimension larger than $2$, the only known constructions prior to our work were (co-dimension 1)-skeletons of quotients of affine buildings. In this paper, we give the first coset complex construction of cosystolic expanders for an arbitrary dimension. Our construction is more symmetric and arguably more elementary than the previous constructions relying on quotients of affine buildings. The coset complexes we consider arise from finite quotients of Kac--Moody--Steinberg (KMS) groups and are known as KMS complexes. KMS complexes were introduced in recent work by Grave de Peralta and Valentiner-Branth where it was shown that they are local-spectral expanders. Our result is that KMS complexes, satisfying some minor condition, give rise to infinite families of bounded degree cosystolic expanders of arbitrary dimension and for any finitely generated Abelian coefficient group. This result is achieved by observing that proper links of KMS complexes are joins of opposition complexes in spherical buildings. In order to show that these opposition complexes are coboundary expanders, we develop a new method for constructing cone functions by iteratively adding sets of vertices. Hence we show that the links of KMS complexes are coboundary expanders. Using the prior local-to-global results, we obtain cosystolic expansion for the (co-dimension 1)-skeletons of the KMS complexes.
Coboundary expansion with non-Abelian coefficients is a strong version of high-dimensional expansion for simplicial complexes. One motivation for studying this notion is that it was recently shown to have deep connections to problems in theoretical computer science. However, very few examples of families of simplicial complexes with this type of expansion are known. Namely, prior to our work, the only known examples were quotients of symplectic buildings and a slight variation of the Kaufman-Oppenheim coset complexes construction associated with $\operatorname{SL}_{n} (\mathbb{F}_p [t])$. In this paper, we show that the Grave de Peralta and Valentiner-Branth constructions of KMS complexes have coboundary expansion with non-Abelian coefficients when it is performed with respect to congruence subgroups of Chevalley groups of classical type, i.e., of type $A_n, B_n, C_n$ and $D_n$. This gives four new sources of examples to this expansion phenomenon, thus significantly enriching our list of constructions.
Coboundary expansion is a high dimensional generalization of the Cheeger constant to simplicial complexes. Originally, this notion was motivated by the fact that it implies topological expansion, but nowadays a significant part of the motivation stems from its deep connection to problems in theoretical computer science such as agreement expansion in the low soundness regime. In this paper, we prove coboundary expansion with non-Abelian coefficients for the coset complex construction of Kaufman and Oppenheim. Our proof uses a novel global argument, as opposed to the local-to-global arguments that are used to prove cosystolic expansion.
We prove that a group acting geometrically on a thick affine building has property (T). A more general criterion for property (T) is given for groups acting on partite complexes.
We introduce a new geometric criterion for vanishing of cohomology for BN-pair groups. In particular, this new criterion yields a sharp vanishing of cohomology result for all BN-pair groups acting on non-thin affine building.
High dimensional expanders is a vibrant emerging field of study. Nevertheless, the only known construction of bounded degree high dimensional expanders is based on Ramanujan complexes, whereas one dimensional bounded degree expanders are abundant. In this work, we construct new families of bounded degree high dimensional expanders obeying the local spectral expansion property. This property has a number of important consequences, including geometric overlapping, fast mixing of high dimensional random walks, agreement testing and agreement expansion. Our construction also yields new families of expander graphs which are close to the Ramanujan bound, i.e., their spectral gap is close to optimal. The construction is quite elementary and it is presented in a self contained manner; This is in contrary to the highly involved previously known construction of the Ramanujan complexes. The construction is also very symmetric (such symmetry properties are not known for Ramanujan complexes) ; The symmetry of the construction could be used, for example, in order to obtain good symmetric LDPC codes that were previously based on Ramanujan graphs. The main tool that we use for is the theory of coset geometries. Coset geometries arose as a tool for studying finite simple groups. Here, we show that coset geometries arise in a very natural manner for groups of elementary matrices over any finitely generated algebra over a commutative unital ring. In other words, we show that such groups act simply transitively on the top dimensional face of a pure, partite, clique complex.
We prove that a large family of higher rank simple Lie groups (including $\rm SL_n (\mathbb{R})$ for $n \geq 3$) and their lattices have Banach property (T) with respect to all super-reflexive Banach spaces. Two consequences of this result are: First, we deduce Banach fixed point properties with respect to all super-reflexive Banach spaces for a large family of higher rank simple Lie groups. For example, we show that for every $n \geq 4$, the group $\rm SL_n (\mathbb{R})$ and all its lattices have the Banach fixed point property with respect to all super-reflexive Banach spaces. Second, we settle a long standing open problem and show that the Margulis expanders (Cayley graphs of $\rm SL_{n} (\mathbb{Z} / m \mathbb{Z} )$ for a fixed $n \geq 3$ and $m$ tending to infinity) are super-expanders. All of our results stem from proving Banach property (T) for $\rm SL_3 (\mathbb{Z})$. Our method of proof for $\rm SL_3 (\mathbb{Z})$ relies on a novel proof for relative Banach property (T) for the uni-triangular subgroup of $\rm SL_3 (\mathbb{Z})$. This proof of relative property (T) is new even in the classical Hilbert setting and is interesting in its own right.
The main result of this paper is that all affine isometric actions of higher rank Steinberg groups over commutative rings on uniformly convex Banach spaces have a fixed point. We consider Steinberg groups over classical root systems and our analysis covers almost all such Steinberg groups excluding a single rank 2 case. The proof of our main result stems from two independent results - a result regarding relative fixed point properties of root subgroups of Steinberg groups and a result regarding passing from relative fixed point properties to a (global) fixed point property. The latter result is proven in the general setting of groups graded by root systems and provides a far reaching generalization of the work of Ershov, Jaikin-Zapirain and Kassabov who proved a similar result regarding property (T) for such groups. As an application of our main result, we give new constructions of super-expanders.
We prove a Banach version of Żuk's criterion for groups acting on partite simplicial complexes. Using this new criterion we derive a new fixed point theorem for random groups in the Gromov density model with respect to several classes of Banach spaces ($L^p$ spaces, Hilbertian spaces, uniformly curved spaces). In particular, we show that for every $p$, a group in the Gromov density model has asymptotically almost surely property $(F L^p)$ and give a sharp lower bound for the growth of the conformal dimension of the boundary of such group as a function of the parameters of the density model.
We study high order random walks in high dimensional expanders; namely, in complexes which are local spectral expanders. Recent works have studied the spectrum of high order walks and deduced fast mixing. However, the spectral gap of high order walks is inherently small, due to natural obstructions that do not happen for walks on expander graphs. In this work we go beyond spectral gap, and relate the shrinkage of a $k$-cochain by the walk operator, to its structure under the assumption of local spectral expansion. A simplicial complex is called an one-sided local spectral expander, if its links have large spectral gaps and a two-sided local spectral expander if its links have large two-sided spectral gaps. We show two Decomposition Theorems (one per one-sided/two-sided local spectral assumption) : For every $k$-cochain $ϕ$ defined on an $n$-dimensional local spectral expander, there exists a decomposition of $ϕ$ into `orthogonal' parts that are, roughly speaking, the `projections' on the $j$-dimensional cochains for $0 \leq j \leq k$. The random walk shrinks each of these parts by a factor of $\frac{k+1-j}{k+2}$ plus an error term that depends on the spectral expansion. %Our two Decomposition Theorems differ in their assumptions on the local spectral gaps - we derive different Decomposition Theorems for the cases of one-sided local spectral gap and two-sided local spectral gap.
In this work we show that high dimensional expansion implies locally testable code. Specifically, we define a notion that we call high-dimensional-expanding-system (HDE-system). This is a set system defined by incidence relations with certain high dimensional expansion relations between its sets. We say that a linear code is modelled over HDE-system, if the collection of linear constraints that the code satisfies could by described via the HDE-system. We show that a code that can be modelled over HDE-system is locally testable. This implies that high dimensional expansion phenomenon solely implies local testability of codes. Prior work had to rely to local notions of local testability to get some global forms of testability (e.g. co-systolic expansion from local one, global agreement from local one), while our work infers global testability directly from high dimensional expansion without relying on some local form of testability. The local testability result that we obtain from HDE-systems is, in fact, stronger than standard one, and we term it amplified local testability. We further show that most of the well studied locally testable codes as Reed-Muller codes and more generally affine invariant codes with single-orbit property fall into our framework. Namely, it is possible to show that they are modelled over an HDE-system, and hence the family of all p-ary affine invariant codes is amplified locally testable. This yields the strongest known testing results for affine invariant codes with single orbit, strengthening the work of Kaufman and Sudan.
We prove a Banach version of Garland's method of proving vanishing of cohomology for groups acting on simplicial complexes. The novelty of this new version is that our new condition applies to every reflexive Banach space. This new version of Garland's method allows us to deduce several criteria for vanishing of group cohomology with coefficients in several classes of Banach spaces (uniformly curved spaces, Hilbertian spaces and $L^p$ spaces). Using these new criteria, we improve recent results regarding Banach fixed point theorems for random groups in the triangular model and give a sharp lower bound for the conformal dimension of the boundary of such groups. Also, we derive new criteria for group stability with respect to p-Schatten norms.
Coboundary and cosystolic expansion are notions of expansion that generalize the Cheeger constant or edge expansion of a graph to higher dimensions. The classical Cheeger inequality implies that for graphs edge expansion is equivalent to spectral expansion. In higher dimensions this is not the case: a simplicial complex can be spectrally expanding but not have high dimensional edge-expansion. The phenomenon of high dimensional edge expansion in higher dimensions is much more involved than spectral expansion, and is far from being understood. In particular, prior to this work, the only known bounded degree cosystolic expanders known were derived from the theory of buildings that is far from being elementary. In this work we study high dimensional complexes which are {\em strongly symmetric}. Namely, there is a group that acts transitively on top dimensional cells of the simplicial complex [e.g., for graphs it corresponds to a group that acts transitively on the edges]. Using the strong symmetry, we develop a new machinery to prove coboundary and cosystolic expansion.
It was shown in a previous work of the first named author with De Chiffre, Glebsky and Thom that there exists a finitely presented group which cannot be approximated by almost-homomorphisms to the unitary groups $U(n)$ equipped with the Frobenius norms (a.k.a as $L^2$ norm, or the Schatten-2-norm). In his ICM18 lecture, Andreas Thom asks if this result can be extended to general Schatten-p-norms. We show that this is indeed the case for $1<p< \infty$.
In this paper, we further explore the local-to-global approach for expansion of simplicial complexes that we call local spectral expansion. Specifically, we prove that local expansion in the links imply the global expansion phenomena of mixing and geometric overlapping. Our mixing results also give tighter bounds on the error terms compared to previously known results.
This paper introduces the notion of local spectral expansion of a simplicial complex as a possible analogue of spectral expansion defined for graphs. We then show that the condition of local spectral expansion for a complex yields various spectral gaps in both the links of the complex and the global Laplacians of the complex.
Using the method of averaged projections and introducing a new notion of angles between projections, we establish a criterion for a certain type of strengthening of property (T) (which is weaker than the notion of strong Banach property (T) introduced by Lafforgue). We also derive several applications regarding fixed point properties and Banach expanders and give examples of these applications.