Property (T), vanishing cohomology, and strong $1$-boundedness

The notion of strong 1-boundedness for finite von Neumann algebras was introduced by Jung. This framework provided a free probabilistic approach to study rigidity properties and classification of finite von Neumann algebras. In this paper, we prove that tracial von Neumann algebras with a finite Kazhdan set are strongly 1-bounded. This includes all Property (T) von Neumann algebras with finite dimensional center and group von Neumann algebras of Property (T) groups. This result generalizes all the previous results in this direction due to Voiculescu, Ge, Ge-Shen, Connes-Shlyakhtenko, Jung-Shlyakhtenko, Jung, and Shlyakhtenko. We also give a new proof of a result of Shlyakhtenko which states that if $G$ is a sofic, finitely presented group with vanishing first $ell^2$-Betti number, then $L(G)$ is strongly 1-bounded. Our proofs are based on analysis of covering estimates of microstate spaces using an iteration technique in the spirit of Jung.

Proper proximality for groups acting on trees

In this paper, the notion of proper proximality (introduced in [BIP18]) is studied for various families of groups that act on trees. We show that if a group acts non-elementarily by isometries on a tree such that for any two edges, the intersection of their edge stabilizers is finite, then G is properly proximal. We then provide a complete classification result for proper proximality among graph products of non-trivial groups, generalizing recent work of Duchesne, Tucker-Drob and Wesolek classifying inner amenability for graph products. As a consequence of the above result we obtain the absence of Cartan subalgebras and Cartan-rigidity in properly proximal graph products of weakly amenable groups with Cowling-Haagerup constant 1.