arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Matthew Kennedy.
We prove an infinite Ramsey theorem for noncommutative graphs realized as unital self-adjoint subspaces of linear operators acting on an infinite dimensional Hilbert space. Specifically, we prove that if V is such a subspace, then provided there is no obvious obstruction, there is an infinite rank projection P with the property that the compression PVP is either maximal or minimal in a certain natural sense.
In this short note we prove that the reduced group C*-algebra of a locally compact group admits a non-zero trace if and only if the amenable radical of the group is open. This completely answers a question raised by Forrest, Spronk and Wiersma.
A discrete group is said to be C*-simple if its reduced C*-algebra is simple, and is said to have the unique trace property if its reduced C*-algebra has a unique tracial state. A dynamical characterization of C*-simplicity was recently obtained by the second and third named authors. In this paper, we introduce new methods for working with group and crossed product C*-algebras that allow us to take the study of C*-simplicity a step further, and in addition to settle the longstanding open problem of characterizing groups with the unique trace property. We give a new and self-contained proof of the aforementioned characterization of C*-simplicity. This yields a new characterization of C*-simplicity in terms of the weak containment of quasi-regular representations. We introduce a convenient algebraic condition that implies C*-simplicity, and show that this condition is satisfied by a vast class of groups, encompassing virtually all previously known examples as well as many new ones. We also settle a question of Skandalis and de la Harpe on the simplicity of reduced crossed products. Finally, we introduce a new property for discrete groups that is closely related to C*-simplicity, and use it to prove a broad generalization of a theorem of Zimmer, originally conjectured by Connes and Sullivan, about amenable actions.
We consider reduced crossed products of twisted C*-dynamical systems over C*-simple groups. We prove there is a bijective correspondence between maximal ideals of the reduced crossed product and maximal invariant ideals of the underlying C*-algebra, and a bijective correspondence between tracial states on the reduced crossed product and invariant tracial states on the underlying C*-algebra. In particular, the reduced crossed product is simple if and only if the underlying C*-algebra has no proper non-trivial invariant ideals, and the reduced crossed product has a unique tracial state if and only if the underlying C*-algebra has a unique invariant tracial state. We also show that the reduced crossed product satisfies an averaging property analogous to Powers' averaging property.
In our paper "Essential normality, essential norms and hyperrigidity" we claimed that the restriction of the identity representation of a certain operator system (constructed from a polynomial ideal) has the unique extension property, however the justification we gave was insufficient. In this note we provide the required justification under some additional assumptions. Fortunately, homogeneous ideals that are "sufficiently non-trivial" are covered by these assumptions. This affects the section of our paper relating essential normality and hyperrigidity. We show here that Proposition 4.11 and Theorem 4.12 hold under the additional assumptions. We do not know if they hold in the generality considered in our paper.
The classification of separable operator spaces and systems is commonly believed to be intractable. We analyze this belief from the point of view of Borel complexity theory. On one hand we confirm that the classification problems for arbitrary separable operator systems and spaces are intractable. On the other hand we show that the finitely generated operator systems and spaces are completely classifiable (or smooth); in fact a finitely generated operator system is classified by its complete theory when regarded as a structure in continuous logic. In the particular case of operator systems generated by a single unitary, a complete invariant is given by the spectrum of the unitary up to a rigid motion of the circle, provided that the spectrum contains at least 5 points. As a consequence of these results we show that the relation on compact subsets of $\mathbb{C}^{n}$, given by homeomorphism via a degree 1 polynomial, is smooth.
A theorem of Thompson provides a non-self-adjoint variant of the classical Schur-Horn theorem by characterizing the possible diagonal values of a matrix with given singular values. We prove an analogue of Thompson's theorem for II_1 factors.
We consider the Schur-Horn problem for normal operators in von Neumann algebras, which is the problem of characterizing the possible diagonal values of a given normal operator based on its spectral data. For normal matrices, this problem is well-known to be extremely difficult, and in fact, it remains open for matrices of size greater than $3$. We show that the infinite dimensional version of this problem is more tractable, and establish approximate solutions for normal operators in von Neumann factors of type I$_\infty$, II and III. A key result is an approximation theorem that can be seen as an approximate multivariate analogue of Kadison's Carpenter Theorem.
For a discrete group G, we consider the minimal C*-subalgebra of $\ell^\infty(G)$ that arises as the image of a unital positive G-equivariant projection. This algebra always exists and is unique up to isomorphism. It is trivial if and only if G is amenable. We prove that, more generally, it can be identified with the algebra $C(\partial_F G)$ of continuous functions on Furstenberg's universal G-boundary $\partial_F G$. This operator-algebraic construction of the Furstenberg boundary has a number of interesting consequences. We prove that G is exact precisely when the G-action on $\partial_F G$ is amenable, and use this fact to prove Ozawa's conjecture that if G is exact, then there is an embedding of the reduced C*-algebra $\mathrm{C}_r^*(G)$ of G into a nuclear C*-algebra which is contained in the injective envelope of $\mathrm{C}_r^*(G)$. It is a longstanding open problem to determine which groups are C*-simple, in the sense that the algebra $\mathrm{C}_r^*(G)$ is simple. We prove that this problem can be reformulated as a problem about the structure of the G-action on the Furstenberg boundary. Specifically, we prove that a discrete group G is C*-simple if and only if the G-action on the Furstenberg boundary is topologically free. We apply this result to prove that Tarski monster groups are C*-simple. This provides another solution to a problem of de la Harpe (recently answered by Olshanskii and Osin) about the existence of C*-simple groups with no free subgroups.
Let $S = (S_1, \ldots, S_d)$ denote the compression of the $d$-shift to the complement of a homogeneous ideal $I$ of $\mathbb{C}[z_1, \ldots, z_d]$. Arveson conjectured that $S$ is essentially normal. In this paper, we establish new results supporting this conjecture, and connect the notion of essential normality to the theory of the C*-envelope and the noncommutative Choquet boundary. The unital norm closed algebra $\mathcal{B}_I$ generated by $S_1,\ldots,S_d$ modulo the compact operators is shown to be completely isometrically isomorphic to the uniform algebra generated by polynomials on $\overline{V} := \overline{\mathcal{Z}(I) \cap \mathbb{B}_d}$, where $\mathcal{Z}(I)$ is the variety corresponding to $I$. Consequently, the essential norm of an element in $\mathcal{B}_I$ is equal to the sup norm of its Gelfand transform, and the C*-envelope of $\mathcal{B}_I$ is identified as the algebra of continuous functions on $\overline{V} \cap \partial \mathbb{B}_d$, which means it is a complete invariant of the topology of the variety determined by $I$ in the ball. Motivated by this determination of the C*-envelope of $\mathcal{B}_I$, we suggest a new, more qualitative approach to the problem of essential normality. We prove the tuple $S$ is essentially normal if and only if it is hyperrigid as the generating set of a C*-algebra, which is a property closely connected to Arveson's notion of a boundary representation. We show that most of our results hold in a much more general setting. In particular, for most of our results, the ideal $I$ can be replaced by an arbitrary (not necessarily homogeneous) invariant subspace of the $d$-shift.
We study the Hopf structure of a class of dual operator algebras corresponding to certain semigroups. This class of algebras arises in dilation theory, and includes the noncommutative analytic Toeplitz algebra and the multiplier algebra of the Drury-Arveson space, which correspond to the free semigroup and the free commutative semigroup respectively. The preduals of the algebras in this class naturally form Hopf (convolution) algebras. The original algebras and their preduals form (non-self-adjoint) dual Hopf algebras in the sense of Effros and Ruan. We study these algebras from this perspective, and obtain a number of results about their structure.
We show that every operator system (and hence every unital operator algebra) has sufficiently many boundary representations to generate the C*-envelope.
We establish the essential normality of a large new class of homogeneous submodules of the finite rank d-shift Hilbert module. The main idea is a notion of essential decomposability that determines when an arbitrary submodule can be decomposed into the sum of essentially normal submodules. We prove that every essentially decomposable submodule is essentially normal, and using ideas from convex geometry, we introduce methods for establishing that a submodule is essentially decomposable. It turns out that many homogeneous submodules of the finite rank d-shift Hilbert module have this property. We prove that many of the submodules considered by other authors are essentially decomposable, and in addition establish the essential decomposability of a large new class of homogeneous submodules. Our results support Arveson's conjecture that every homogeneous submodule of the finite rank d-shift Hilbert module is essentially normal.
We study the structure of bounded linear functionals on a class of non-self-adjoint operator algebras that includes the multiplier algebra of every complete Nevanlinna-Pick space, and in particular the multiplier algebra of the Drury-Arveson space. Our main result is a Lebesgue decomposition expressing every linear functional as the sum of an absolutely continuous (i.e. weak-* continuous) linear functional, and a singular linear functional that is far from being absolutely continuous. This is a non-self-adjoint analogue of Takesaki's decomposition theorem for linear functionals on von Neumann algebras. We apply our decomposition theorem to prove that the predual of every algebra in this class is (strongly) unique.
We consider the Arveson-Douglas conjecture on the essential normality of homogeneous submodules corresponding to algebraic subvarieties of the unit ball. We prove that the property of essential normality is preserved by isomorphisms between varieties, and we establish a similar result for maps between varieties that are not necessarily invertible. We also relate the decomposability of an algebraic variety to the problem of establishing the essential normality of the corresponding submodule. These results are applied to prove that the Arveson-Douglas conjecture holds for submodules corresponding to varieties that decompose into linear subspaces, and varieties that decompose into components with mutually disjoint linear spans.
An $n$-tuple of operators $(V_1,...,V_n)$ acting on a Hilbert space $H$ is said to be isometric if the row operator $(V_1,...,V_n) : H^n \to H$ is an isometry. We prove that every isometric $n$-tuple is hyperreflexive, in the sense of Arveson. For $n = 1$, the hyperreflexivity constant is at most 95. For $n \geq 2$, the hyperreflexivity constant is at most 6.
An $n$-tuple of operators $(V_1,...,V_n)$ acting on a Hilbert space $H$ is said to be isometric if the operator $[V_1\...\ V_n]:H^n\to H$ is an isometry. We prove a decomposition for an isometric tuple of operators that generalizes the classical Lebesgue-von Neumann-Wold decomposition of an isometry into the direct sum of a unilateral shift, an absolutely continuous unitary and a singular unitary. We show that, as in the classical case, this decomposition determines the weakly closed algebra and the von Neumann algebra generated by the tuple.
We show that for all q in the interval (-1,1), the Fock representation of the q-commutation relations can be unitarily embedded into the Fock representation of the extended Cuntz algebra. In particular, this implies that the C*-algebra generated by the Fock representation of the q-commutation relations is exact. An immediate consequence is that the q-Gaussian von Neumann algebra is weakly exact for all q in the interval (-1,1).