arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Uri Bader.
We characterise acylindrical hyperbolicity of a group in terms of properties of an action of the group on a set (without any extra structure). In particular, this applies to the action of the group on itself by left multiplication, as well as the action on a (full measure subset of the) Furstenberg-Poisson boundary.
We discuss special properties of the spaces of characters and positive definite functions, as well as their associated dynamics, for arithmetic groups of product type. Axiomatizing these properties, we define the notions of charmenability and charfiniteness and study their applications to the topological dynamics, ergodic theory and unitary representation theory of the given groups. To do that, we study singularity properties of equivariant normal ucp maps between certain von Neumann algebras. We apply our discussion also to groups acting on product of trees.
Given a group satisfying sufficient finiteness properties, we discuss a group algebra criterion for vanishing of all its cohomology groups with unitary coefficients in a certain degree.
Let $Γ$ be a lattice in $\mathrm{SO}_0(n, 1)$. We prove that if the associated locally symmetric space contains infinitely many maximal totally geodesic subspaces of dimension at least $2$, then $Γ$ is arithmetic. This answers a question of Reid for hyperbolic $n$-manifolds and, independently, McMullen for hyperbolic $3$-manifolds. We prove these results by proving a superrigidity theorem for certain representations of such lattices. The proof of our superrigidity theorem uses results on equidistribution from homogeneous dynamics and our main result also admits a formulation in that language.
We prove a super-rigidity result for algebraic representations over complete fields of irreducible lattices in product of groups and lattices with dense commensurator groups. We derive some criteria for non-linearity of such groups.
We consider finitely generated group endowed with a word metric. The group acts on itself by isometries, which induces an action on its horofunction boundary. The conjecture is that nilpotent groups act trivially on their reduced boundary. We will show this for the Heisenberg group. The main tool will be a discrete version of the isoperimetric inequality.
Let $X$ be a locally finite irreducible affine building of dimension $\geq 2$ and $Γ\leq \mathrm{Aut}(X)$ be a discrete group acting cocompactly. The goal of this paper is to address the following question: When is $Γ$ linear? More generally, when does $Γ$ admit a finite-dimensional representation with infinite image over a commutative unital ring? If $X$ is the Bruhat--Tits building of a simple algebraic group over a local field and if $Γ$ is an arithmetic lattice, then $Γ$ is clearly linear. We prove that if $X$ is of type $\widetilde A_2$, then the converse holds. In particular, cocompact lattices in exotic $\widetilde A_2$-buildings are non-linear. As an application, we obtain the first infinite family of lattices in exotic $\widetilde A_2$-buildings of arbitrarily large thickness, providing also a partial answer to a question of W. Kantor from 1986. We also show that if $X$ is Bruhat--Tits of arbitrary type, then the linearity of $Γ$ implies that $Γ$ is virtually contained in the linear part of the automorphism group of $X$, in particular $Γ$ is an arithmetic lattice. The proofs are based on the machinery of algebraic representations of ergodic systems recently developed by U. Bader and A. Furman. The implementation of that tool in the present context requires the geometric construction of a suitable ergodic $Γ$-space attached to the the building $X$, which we call the \emph{singular Cartan flow}.
Linear upper bounds are provided for the size of the torsion homology of negatively curved manifolds of finite volume in all dimensions $d\ne 3$. This extends a classical theorem by Gromov. In dimension $3$, as opposed to the Betti numbers, the size of torsion homology is unbounded in terms of the volume. Moreover, there is a sequence of $3$-dimensional hyperbolic manifolds that converges to $\mathbb{H}^3$ in the Benjamini--Schramm topology while its normalized torsion in the first homology is dense in $[0,\infty]$. In dimension $d\geq 4$ a somewhat precise estimate is given for the number of negatively curved manifolds of finite volume, up to homotopy, and in dimension $d\ge 5$ up to homeomorphism. These results are based on an effective simplicial thick-thin decomposition which is of independent interest.
We give an extension of Margulis' Super-Rigidity for higher rank lattices. In our approach the target group could be defined over any complete valued field. Our proof is based on the notion of Algebraic Representation of Ergodic Actions.
We give a Super-Rigidity theorem a la Margulis which applies for a wider class of groups. In particular it applies to subgroups which are not assumed to be lattices in the ambient group. Our proof is based on the notion of Algebraic Representation of Ergodic Actions.
We introduce a class of countable groups by some abstract group-theoretic conditions. It includes linear groups with finite amenable radical and finitely generated residually finite groups with some non-vanishing $\ell^2$-Betti numbers that are not virtually a product of two infinite groups. Further, it includes acylindrically hyperbolic groups. For any group $Γ$ in this class we determine the general structure of its possible lattice embeddings, i.e. of all compactly generated, locally compact groups that contain $Γ$ as a lattice. This leads to a precise description of possible non-uniform lattice embeddings of groups in this class. Further applications include the determination of possible lattice embeddings of fundamental groups of closed manifolds with pinched negative curvature.
We study equicontinuous actions of semisimple groups and some generalizations. We prove that any such action is universally closed, and in particular proper. We derive various applications, both old and new, including closedness of continuous homomorphisms, nonexistence of weaker topologies, metric ergodicity of transitive actions and vanishing of matrix coefficients for reflexive (more generally: WAP) representations.
We prove that, under mild assumptions, a lattice in a product of semi-simple Lie group and a totally disconnected locally compact group is, in a certain sense, arithmetic. We do not assume the lattice to be finitely generated or the ambient group to be compactly generated.
Let G be an algebraic group over a complete separable valued field k. We discuss the dynamics of the G-action on spaces of probability measures on algebraic G-varieties. We show that the stabilizers of measures are almost algebraic and the orbits are separated by open invariant sets. We discuss various applications, including existence results for algebraic representations of amenable ergodic actions. The latter provides an essential technical step in the recent generalization of Margulis-Zimmer super-rigidity phenomenon due to Bader and Furman.
A result due to M. Gromov states that any two finitely generated groups Γ and Λ are quasi-isometric if and only if they admit a topological coupling, i.e., a commuting pair of proper continuous cocompact actions $Γ\curvearrowright X\curvearrowleft Λ$ on a locally compact Hausdorff space. This result is extended here to all (compactly generated) locally compact second countable groups.
We study the unitary boundary representation of a strongly transitive group acting on a right-angled hyperbolic building. We show its irreducibility. We do so by associating to such a representation a representation of a certain Hecke algebra, which is a deformation of the classical representation of a hyperbolic reflection group. We show that the associated Hecke algebra representation is irreducible.
We announce results about the structure and arithmeticity of all possible lattice embeddings of a class of countable groups which encompasses all linear groups with simple Zariski closure, all groups with non-vanishing first l2-Betti number, word hyperbolic groups, and, more general, convergence groups.
We show that an amenable Invariant Random Subgroup of a locally compact second countable group lives in the amenable radical. This answers a question raised in the introduction of the paper "Kesten's Theorem for Invariant Random Subgroup" by Abert, Glasner and Virag. We also consider, in the opposite direction, property (T), and prove a similar statement for this property. The Appendix by Phillip Wesolek proves that the set of amenable subgroups is a Borel subset in the Chabauty topology.