Related papers: Turbulence, amalgamation and generic automorphisms…
If $X$ is a separable reflexive Banach space, there are several natural Polish topologies on $\mathcal{B}(X)$, the set of contraction operators on $X$ (none of which being clearly ``more natural'' than the others), and hence several a…
We study the question how quickly products of a fixed conjugacy class in the projective unitary group of a II${}_1$-factor von Neumann algebra cover the entire group. Our result is that the number of factors that are needed is essentially…
We investigate the automorphism groups of $\aleph\_0$-categorical structures and prove that they are exactly the Roelcke precompact Polish groups. We show that the theory of a structure is stable if and only if every Roelcke uniformly…
From the cohomological point of view the symplectomorphism group $Sympl (M)$ of a symplectic manifold is `` tamer'' than the diffeomorphism group. The existence of invariant polynomials in the Lie algebra $\frak {sympl }(M)$, the symplectic…
We study the automorphism groups of countable homogeneous directed graphs (and some additional homogeneous structures) from the point of view of topological dynamics. We determine precisely which of these automorphism groups are amenable…
We extend the proof of automatic continuity for homeomorphism groups of manifolds to non-compact manifolds and manifolds with marked points and their mapping class groups. Specifically, we show that, for any manifold $M$ homeomorphic to the…
In an earlier paper, we introduced the following pre-order on the subgroups of a given Polish group: if $G$ is a Polish group and $H,L \subseteq G$ are subgroups, we say $H$ is {\em homomorphism reducible} to $L$ iff there is a continuous…
We answer positively a question of Ryzhikov, namely we show that being a relatively weakly mixing extension is a comeager property in the Polish group of measure preserving transformations. We study some related classes of ergodic…
We examine properties of generic automorphisms of the random poset, with the goal of explicitly characterizing them. We associate to each automorphism an auxiliary first-order structure, consisting of the random poset equipped with an…
We study the question of which Polish groups can be realized as subgroups of the unitary group of a separable infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. We also show that for a separable unital C$^*$-algebra $A$, the identity component…
It is proved that any countable index, universally measurable subgroup of a Polish group is open. By consequence, any universally measurable homomorphism from a Polish group into the infinite symmetric group $S_\infty$ is continuous. It is…
We first give simplified and corrected accounts of some results in \cite{PiRCP} on compactifications of pseudofinite groups. For instance, we use a classical theorem of Turing \cite{Turing} to give a simplified proof that any definable…
We present a recent result of Ibarluc\'ia stating that every Roelcke precompact Polish group has Kazhdan's property (T). This striking theorem builds on the characterization of Roelcke precompact Polish groups as automorphism groups of…
A series of recent papers by Bergfalk, Lupini and Panagiotopoulus developed the foundations of a field known as `definable algebraic topology,' in which classical cohomological invariants are enriched by viewing them as groups with a Polish…
A topological space is almost locally compact if it contains a dense locally compact subspace. We generalize a result from \cite{Ma}, showing that isomorphism on Borel classes of almost locally compact Polish metric structures is always…
We study the complexity of the isomorphism relation for various classes of closed subgroups of the group of permutations of the natural numbers. We use the setting of Borel reducibility between equivalence relations on Polish spaces. For…
We study a Hopf algebroid, $\calh$, naturally associated to the groupoid $U_n^\delta\ltimes U_n$. We show that classes in the Hopf cyclic cohomology of $\calh$ can be used to define secondary characteristic classes of trivialized flat…
We give a general construction of topological groups from combinatorial structures such as trees, towers, gaps, and subadditive functions. We connect topological properties of corresponding groups with combinatorial properties of these…
Building on results of Medvedev, we construct a $\mathsf{ZFC}$ example of a non-Polish topological group that is countable dense homogeneous. Our example is a dense subgroup of $\mathbb{Z}^\omega$ of size $\mathfrak{b}$ that is a…
Given two automorphisms of a group $G$, one is interested in knowing whether they are conjugate in the automorphism group of $G$, or in the abstract commensurator of $G$, and how these two properties may differ. When $G$ is the fundamental…