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Amalgamated free product rigidity for group von Neumann algebras
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Amalgamated free product rigidity for group von Neumann algebras

Ionuţ Chifan and Adrian Ioana
Advances in mathematics (New York. 1965), Vol.329, pp.819-850
04/30/2018
DOI: 10.1016/j.aim.2018.02.025
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aim.2018.02.025View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

We provide a fairly large family of amalgamated free product groups Γ=Γ1⁎ΣΓ2 whose amalgam structure can be completely recognized from their von Neumann algebras. Specifically, assume that Γi is a product of two icc non-amenable bi-exact groups, and Σ is icc amenable with trivial one-sided commensurator in Γi, for every i=1,2. Then Γ satisfies the following rigidity property: any group Λ such that L(Λ) is isomorphic to L(Γ) admits an amalgamated free product decomposition Λ=Λ1⁎ΔΛ2 such that the inclusions L(Δ)⊆L(Λi) and L(Σ)⊆L(Γi) are isomorphic, for every i=1,2. This result significantly strengthens some of the previous Bass–Serre rigidity results for von Neumann algebras. As a corollary, we obtain the first examples of amalgamated free product groups which are W⁎-superrigid.
Group von Neumann algebra W⁎-superrigidity Amalgamated free product

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