Related papers: A characterization of $C^*$-simplicity of countabl…

It is a classical result of Kaimanovich and Vershik and independently of Rosenblatt that a non-amenable group admits a non-degenerate symmetric measure such that the Poisson boundary is trivial. Most if not all examples to date of non-free…

A countable group is C*-simple if its reduced C*-algebra is simple. It is well known that C*-simplicity implies that the amenable radical of the group must be trivial. We show that the converse does not hold by constructing explicit…

A group is said to be C*-simple if its reduced C*-algebra is simple. We establish an intrinsic (group-theoretic) characterization of groups with this property. Specifically, we prove that a discrete group is C*-simple if and only if it has…

We prove that a countable group with an effective minimal non-elementary convergence group action is a Powers group. More strongly we prove that it is a strongly Powers group and thus its non-trivial subnormal subgroups are $C^*$-simple.

Given a rigid C*-tensor category C with simple unit and a probability measure $\mu$ on the set of isomorphism classes of its simple objects, we define the Poisson boundary of $(C,\mu)$. This is a new C*-tensor category P, generally with…

A countable group is C*-simple if its reduced C*-algebra is a simple algebra. Since Powers recognised in 1975 that non-abelian free groups are C*-simple, large classes of groups which appear naturally in geometry have been identified,…

The reduced C*-algebra of a countable linear group G is shown to be simple if and only if G has no nontrivial normal amenable subgroups. Moreover, these conditions are shown to be equivalent to the uniqueness of tracial state on the…

We investigate a class of groups acting on possibly exotic affine buildings $X$ and possessing good proximal properties. Such groups are termed of general type, and their dynamics is analyzed through their flag limit sets in the space of…

We give a sufficient condition for a countable group $G$ to possess a probability measure $\mu$ that admits a non-trivial $\mu$-boundary modeled in the space $\mathrm{Sub}_{\mathrm{am}}(G)$ of amenable subgroups of $G$. In particular, for…

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…

Given a finitely generated group, the well-known Stability Problem asks whether the non-triviality of the Poisson-Furstenberg boundary (which is equivalent to the existence of non-constant bounded harmonic functions) depends on the choice…

The Poisson boundary of a group G with a probability measure \mu is the space of ergodic components of the time shift in the path space of the associated random walk. Via a generalization of the classical Poisson formula it gives an…

We give sufficient conditions for the non-triviality of the Poisson boundary of random walks on $H(\mathbb{Z})$ and its subgroups. The group $H(\mathbb{Z})$ is the group of piecewise projective homeomorphisms over the integers defined by…

For any countable group with infinite conjugacy classes we construct a family of forests on the group. For each of them there is a random walk on the group with the property that its sample paths almost surely converge to the geometric…

We study the simplicity of $C^{*}$-algebras built from group actions. For a faithful isometric action of a group $G$ on a countable metric space $X$, we use the associated action representation on $\ell^2(X)$ to define the action-based…

We give new characterizations to ensure that a free product of groups with amalgamation has a simple reduced group C*-algebra, and provide a concrete example of an amalgam with trivial kernel, such that its reduced group C*-algebra has a…

We introduce the notion of confined subalgebras in the context of the group von Neumann algebra. We also define Uniformly Recurrent States -- an operator-algebraic analog of Uniformly Recurrent Subgroups. Using this framework, we show that…

We give a geometric description of the Poisson boundaries of certain extensions of free and hyperbolic groups. In particular, we get a full description of the Poisson boundaries of free-by-cyclic groups. We rely upon the description of…

We show that the $C^*$-algebra associated by Nekrashevych to a contracting self-similar group is simple if and only if the corresponding complex $\ast$-algebra is simple. We also improve on Steinberg and Szaka\'c's algorithm to determine if…

We introduce and investigate several quantum group dynamical notions for the purpose of studying $C^*$-simplicity of discrete quantum groups via the theory of boundary actions. In particular we define a quantum analogue of Powers' Averaging…