Yuval Gorfine | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

On the unitary cohomology of semisimple groups

We study the continuous homology and cohomology of semisimple Lie groups with coefficients in arbitrary unitary representations. The case of irreducible representations was determined by Vogan and Zuckerman; we focus on reducible representations. The (co)homology splits into its Hausdorff and torsion parts. The Hausdorff part is governed by containment of irreducible cohomological representations. We show that the torsion part is governed by weak containment of irreducible cohomological representations. Precisely, we show that a unitary representation admits non-zero torsion if and only if there is a cohomological point which is not isolated in its support. We discuss in length examples of rank-$1$ groups, completely determining unitary cohomology for the group $\mathrm{SO}^\circ(n,1)$. For a simple Lie group, the first and fourth named authors showed that the first degree in which it obtains non-trivial cohomology for some unitary representation with no invariant vectors is related to the rank of the group. We discuss the analogous question regarding torsion cohomology, and show that the corresponding first degree could be much higher: in the presence of property (T), it is bounded below by the square root of the dimension of the symmetric space. A technical device that we use is the restriction to well chosen dense subgroups which satisfy finiteness properties, which we call cohomological witnesses. We combine it with results on the unitary cohomology of groups which satisfy finiteness properties. These results are of an independent interest.

math.GR↗

arXiv2025

Non-uniform higher-rank lattices are character rigid

We establish character rigidity for all non-uniform higher-rank irreducible lattices in semisimple groups of characteristic other than 2. This implies stabilizer rigidity for probability measure preserving actions and rigidity of invariant random subgroups, confirming a conjecture of Stuck and Zimmer for non-uniform lattices in full generality.

math.GR↗

arXiv2025

A Spectral Gap Absorption Principle

We show that unitary representations of simply connected, semisimple algebraic groups over local fields of characteristic zero obey a spectral gap absorption principle: that is, that spectral gap is preserved under tensor products. We do this by proving that the unitary dual of simple algebraic groups is filtered by the integrability parameter of matrix coefficients. This is a filtration of closed ideals that captures every closed subset of the dual that doesn't contain the trivial representation. In other words, we show that a representation has a spectral gap if and only if there exists some $p < \infty$ such that its matrix coefficients are in $L^{p+ε}(G)$ for every $ε>0$. Doing this, we continue the work of Bader and Sauer in this area and prove a conjecture they phrased. We also use this principle to give an affirmative solution to a conjecture raised by Bekka and Valette: the image of the restriction map from a semisimple group to a lattice is never dense in Fell topology.

math.GR↗