No Arabic abstract
We show that every abstract homomorphism $varphi$ from a locally compact group $L$ to a graph product $G_Gamma$, endowed with the discrete topology, is either continuous or $varphi(L)$ lies in a small parabolic subgroup. In particular, every locally compact group topology on a graph product whose graph is not small is discrete. This extends earlier work by Morris-Nickolas. We also show the following. If $L$ is a locally compact group and if $G$ is a discrete group which contains no infinite torsion group and no infinitely generated abelian group, then every abstract homomorphism $varphi:Lto G$ is either continuous, or $varphi(L)$ is contained in the normalizer of a finite nontrivial subgroup of $G$. As an application we obtain results concerning the continuity of homomorphisms from locally compact groups to Artin and Coxeter groups.
We are concerned with questions of the following type. Suppose that $G$ and $K$ are topological groups belonging to a certain class $cal K$ of spaces, and suppose that $phi:K to G$ is an abstract (i.e. not necessarily continuous) surjective group homomorphism. Under what conditions on the group $G$ and the kernel is the homomorphism $phi$ automatically continuous and open? Questions of this type have a long history and were studied in particular for the case that $G$ and $K$ are Lie groups, compact groups, or Polish groups. We develop an axiomatic approach, which allows us to resolve the question uniformly for different classes of topological groups. In this way we are able to extend the classical results about automatic continuity to a much more general setting.
We prove continuity results for abstract epimorphisms of locally compact groups onto finitely generated groups.
Rational discrete cohomology and homology for a totally disconnected locally compact group $G$ is introduced and studied. The $mathrm{Hom}$-$otimes$ identities associated to the rational discrete bimodule $mathrm{Bi}(G)$ allow to introduce the notion of rational duality groups in analogy to the discrete case. It is shown that semi-simple groups defined over a non-discrete, non-archimedean local field are rational t.d.l.c. duality groups, and the same is true for certain topological Kac-Moody groups. However, Y. Neretins group of spheromorphisms of a locally finite regular tree is not even of finite rational discrete cohomological dimension. For a unimodular t.d.l.c. group $G$ of type $mathrm{FP}$ it is possible to define an Euler-Poincare characteristic $chi(G)$ which is a rational multiple of a Haar measure. This value is calculated explicitly for Chevalley groups defined over a non-discrete, non-archimedean local field $K$ and some other examples.
We study abstract group actions of locally compact Hausdorff groups on CAT(0) spaces. Under mild assumptions on the action we show that it is continuous or has a global fixed point. This mirrors results by Dudley and Morris-Nickolas for actions on trees. As a consequence we obtain a geometric proof for the fact that any abstract group homomorphism from a locally compact Hausdorff group into a torsion free CAT(0) group is continuous.
We give some new characterizations of exactness for locally compact second countable groups. In particular, we prove that a locally compact second countable group is exact if and only if it admits a topologically amenable action on a compact Hausdorff space. This answers an open question by Anantharaman-Delaroche.