Noncommutative Geometry Seminar
Date: February 22, 2017
Time: 2:00PM - 2:50PM
Location: BLOC 628
Speaker: Thomas Sinclair, Purdue University
Title: (Colloquium Talk) Product rigidity results for group von Neumann algebras
Abstract: Given a locally compact second countable group G, the group von Neumann algebra L(G) is the algebra associated to the invariant subspace decomposition of the left regular representation. It is a natural, and quite difficult, question to address how much of the group structure is recoverable from L(G). That is if two groups have isomorphic group von Neumann algebras what algebraic structure do the groups have in common? In the case of infinite discrete groups, we will explain how if G is a direct product of "indecomposable" groups, such as nonabelian free groups or nonelementary hyperbolic groups, then the product structure can be fully recovered from L(G). This is joint work with Ionut Chifan and Rolando de Santiago.