English

Banach space actions and $L^2$-spectral gap

Functional Analysis 2021-02-24 v3 Group Theory Probability

Abstract

\.{Z}uk proved that if a finitely generated group admits a Cayley graph such that the Laplacian on the links of this Cayley graph has a spectral gap >12> \frac{1}{2}, then the group has property (T), or equivalently, every affine isometric action of the group on a Hilbert space has a fixed point. We prove that the same holds for affine isometric actions of the group on a uniformly curved Banach space (for example an LpL^p-space with 1<p<1 < p < \infty or an interpolation space between a Hilbert space and an arbitrary Banach space) as soon as the Laplacian on the links has a two-sided spectral gap >1ε>1-\varepsilon. This criterion applies to random groups in the triangular density model for densities >13> \frac{1}{3}. In this way, we are able to generalize recent results of Dru\c{t}u and Mackay to affine isometric actions of random groups on uniformly curved Banach spaces. Also, in the setting of actions on LpL^p-spaces, our results are quantitatively stronger, even in the case p=2p=2. This naturally leads to new estimates on the conformal dimension of the boundary of random groups in the triangular model. Additionally, we obtain results on the eigenvalues of the pp-Laplacian on graphs, and on the spectrum and degree distribution of Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1705.03296,
  title  = {Banach space actions and $L^2$-spectral gap},
  author = {Tim de Laat and Mikael de la Salle},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1705.03296},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

v2: Major revision; substantial improvements of the main results; 28 pages v3: Minor revision; 29 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T19:41:37.052Z