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BOUNDARIES OF REDUCED FREE GROUP C*-ALGEBRAS A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN MATHEMATICS UNIVERSITY OF REGINA By Hongyun Dong Regina, Saskatchewan January 2009 © Copyright 2009: Hongyun Dong Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-55046-5 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-55046-5 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada UNIVERSITY OF REGINA FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH SUPERVISORY AND EXAMINING COMMITTEE Hongyun Dong, candidate for the degree of Master of Science in Mathematics, has presented a thesis titled Boundaries of Reduced Free Group C*-Algebras, in an oral examination held on October 28, 2008. The following committee members have found the thesis acceptable in form and content, and that the candidate demonstrated satisfactory knowledge of the subject material. External Examiner: Dr. Chang-Nian Zhang, Department of Computer Science Supervisor: Dr. Martin Argerami, Supervisor Committee Member: Dr. Douglas Farenick, Department of Mathematics and Statistics Chair of Defense: Dr. Philip Fong, Department of Computer Science Abstract The thesis shows the inclusion C*(T) c C;(T,dT) C r(C*(T)), where T is the free groups and dT its boundary. The reduced group C*-algebra C*(T) is separable and exact. The reduced crossed product C*(T, dT) is a separable nuclear C*-algebra. I(C*(T)) is the injective envelope of C*(T). This proof by N. Ozawa was published in 2007. In order to understand his proof, there is need for a good knowledge of Operator theory, functional analysis, group theory, C*-algebra and general topology. The first chapter of this thesis provides the introduction of this interesting question and other related results. In Chapter 2, the necessary preliminaries of C*-algebra are presented. Chapter 3 introduces the topological groups, including free groups, amenable groups, hyperbolic groups and amenable group actions. More advanced materials are presented in the remaining chapters. In Chapter 4, we introduce the concept and properties of group C*-algebras. In particular, we focus on reduced and full group C*-algebras for the free groups. Chapter 5 presents the necessary knowledge of the crossed products of C*-algebras. In Chapter 6, we introduce injective envelope i of C*-algebras which is very important for this thesis. Ozawa's orginal proofs for this question are given in Chapter 7. The final chapter reviews the result and further developments of this question. n Acknowledgements I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Martin Argerami, for his guidance and support through the past two years of my study. His detailed explanations and constructive comments have not only assisted me through my course work but proved an important factor in the independent research and study needed to complete this thesis. I am, also, deeply grateful to Dr. Douglas Farenick for his advice on the structural design of my thesis. Dr. Douglas Farenick kindly devoted additional time to mark the homework I handed in on the courses I audited and was always available to answer my questions. I warmly thank, Dr. Remus Floricel, who regularly attended my seminars and provided friendly help on a number of questions. I also wish to thank my friends, Sadia Mwangangi and Abdullah Al-Ahamari for their friendship and on-going support through our regular discussions on a variety of math problems, proofs and solution directions. Lastly and most importantly, I wish to thank my family. Without their encour agement and understanding it would have been impossible for me to finish this work. iii Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv 1 Introduction 1 2 Preliminaries on C*-algebras 3 2.1 Gelfand Theory 3 2.2 Representations of C*-algebras 12 2.3 Topologies in B{H) 15 2.4 Nuclear and Exact C*-algebras 18 3 Topological Groups 20 3.1 Free Groups 20 3.2 Topological Groups 22 iv 3.3 Amenable Groups 24 3.4 Hyperbolic Groups 31 4 Group C*-algebras 36 5 Crossed Products 52 6 Injective Envelopes 60 7 Main Result 73 8 Conclusion 82 v Chapter 1 Introduction In mathematics, embedding is an interesting question which has different meanings in different contexts. In [13, 14], Kirchberg proves that any separable exact C*-algebra can be embedded into a separable nuclear C*-algebra as a C*-subalgebra. N. Ozawa conjectures that, in general, for any separable exact C*-algebra A there exists a nuclear C*-algebra B between A and its injective envelope 1(A) and B is the unique nuclear C*-algebra that contains A rigidly, which is a tighter embedding. In [21], he proved that this holds for the free groups with rank 2 < r < oo. That is C;(T) C Cr*(r,ar) C 7(C;(r)), where r is the free group and DT its boundary. In [10], Germain proved the result for another particular example. He showed that if T is a non-amenable free product of two countable discrete groups F\ and 1^ such that for some measures on each group the set of extremals in the corresponding Martin boundaries is closed, then there exists a nuclear C*-algebra that sits between C*(T) 1 and its injective envelope. The projective special linear group PSL2(Z) satisfies the assumption of this theorem. Chapter 2 Preliminaries on C*-algebras 2.1 Gelfand Theory A C*-algebra is a particular type of Banach algebra that is connected with the theory of operators on a Hilbert space. Before defining C*-algebras, we need to define the Gelfand transform for com mutative unital Banach algebras. There is a stronger form of Gelfand transform for C*-algebras. Let V be a Banach space and let B(V) be the space of all continuous and bounded operators on V. The spectrum of x € B(V) is the set a(x) C C of all A G C for which x — XI is not invertible. The set of characters (i.e., non-zero complex-valued homomorphisms) of a commutative unital Banach algebra A is called the spectrum (or maximal ideal space) of A, and is denoted by SpA. The spectral radius of x € A is the quantity spr(x) = max{|A|, A E c(:r)}, the radius of the smallest closed 3 disc D C C with center 0 G D such that a(x) C D. Theorem 2.1.1. (Gelfand transform) Let A be a commutative unital Banach algebra. For x G A, define x : SpA —> C by x(l) = l(x), I e SpA Then the range of the function x on SpA is OA{X), where CTA{X) = {A € C | x — XI has no inverses in A}. Furthermore, the map A is a homomorphism from A to C(SpA) A:A^ C{SpA) x ^ x e C(SpA) and ||x||oo < II^HJ for every x G A. The homomorphism A is called the Gelfand transform. An involution on the Banach algebra A is a bijection x i—> x* such that the following properties hold for any x, y G A and A G C: 1. (x*)* = x; 2. (\x)* = Xx*; 3. (x + yY=x*y*; 4. (xj/)* = y*x*. 4 Definition 2.1.2. A C*-algebra A is a Banach algebra with an involution such that \\x*x\\ = ||x||2 for every x € A. The following are some examples of C*-algebras. 1. If Ti is a Hilbert space, the space B(H) of all continuous bounded operators on H is a C*-algebra, where the involution is given by the usual adjoint. 2. If X is a compact space, then C(X) is a C*-algebra, where /* is defined by P(t) = J{t), and ll/H = sup{/(*), t € X}. 3. The space K(7i) of compact operators in a Hilbert space Ti. is a C*-algebra. K(7i) is unital if and only if 7i is finite-dimensional.