Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Let X be the set of all natural numbers and let be the group of all finite permutations of X. The group equipped with the discrete topology, is called the infinite symmetric group. It was discussed in F. J. Murray and J. von Neumann as a concrete example of an ICC-group, which is a discrete group with infinite conjugacy classes. It is proved that the regular representation of an ICC-group is a factor representation of type II1. The infinite symmetric group is, therefore, a group not of type I. This may be the reason why its unitary representations have not been investigated satisfactorily. In fact, only few results are known. For instance, all indecomposable central positive definite functions on , which are related to factor representations of type IIl, were given by E. Thoma. Later on, A. M. Vershik and S. V. Kerov obtained the same result by a different method in and gave a realization of the representations of type II1 in. Concerning irreducible representations, A. Lieberman and G. I. Ol’shanskii obtained a characterization of a certain family of countably many irreducible representations by introducing a particular topology in However, irreducible representations have been studied not so actively as factor representations.