We extend the Burger–Mozes theory of closed, nondiscrete, locally quasiprimitive automorphism groups of locally finite, connected graphs to the semiprimitive case, and develop a generalization of Burger–Mozes universal groups acting on the regular tree $T_{d}$ of degree $d\in \mathbb {N}_{\ge 3}$. Three applications are given. First, we characterize the automorphism types that the quasicentre of a nondiscrete subgroup of $\operatorname {\mathrm {Aut}}(T_{d})$ may feature in terms of the group’s local action. In doing so, we explicitly construct closed, nondiscrete, compactly generated subgroups of $\operatorname {\mathrm {Aut}}(T_{d})$ with nontrivial quasicentre, and see that the Burger–Mozes theory does not extend further to the transitive case. We then characterize the $(P_{k})$-closures of locally transitive subgroups of $\operatorname {\mathrm {Aut}}(T_{d})$ containing an involutive inversion, and thereby partially answer two questions by Banks et al. [‘Simple groups of automorphisms of trees determined by their actions on finite subtrees’, J. Group Theory 18(2) (2015), 235–261]. Finally, we offer a new view on the Weiss conjecture.

A connected, locally finite graph $\Gamma $ is a Cayley–Abels graph for a totally disconnected, locally compact group G if G acts vertex-transitively on $\Gamma $ with compact, open vertex stabilizers. Define the minimal degree of G as the minimal degree of a Cayley–Abels graph of G. We relate the minimal degree in various ways to the modular function, the scale function and the structure of compact open subgroups. As an application, we prove that if $T_{d}$ denotes the d-regular tree, then the minimal degree of $\mathrm{Aut}(T_{d})$ is d for all $d\geq 2$ .

Let G be a locally compact group and let ${\mathcal {SUB}(G)}$ be the hyperspace of closed subgroups of G endowed with the Chabauty topology. The main purpose of this paper is to characterise the connectedness of the Chabauty space ${\mathcal {SUB}(G)}$ . More precisely, we show that if G is a connected pronilpotent group, then ${\mathcal {SUB}(G)}$ is connected if and only if G contains a closed subgroup topologically isomorphic to ${{\mathbb R}}$ .

It is a long-standing open question whether every Polish group that is not locally compact admits a Borel action on a standard Borel space whose associated orbit equivalence relation is not essentially countable. We answer this question positively for the class of all Polish groups that embed in the isometry group of a locally compact metric space. This class contains all non-archimedean Polish groups, for which we provide an alternative proof based on a new criterion for non-essential countability. Finally, we provide the following variant of a theorem of Solecki: every infinite-dimensional Banach space has a continuous action whose orbit equivalence relation is Borel but not essentially countable.

Motivated by the Bruhat and Cartan decompositions of general linear groups over local fields, we enumerate double cosets of the group of label-preserving automorphisms of a label-regular tree over the fixator of an end of the tree and over maximal compact open subgroups. This enumeration is used to show that every continuous homomorphism from the automorphism group of a label-regular tree has closed range.

We study lattice embeddings for the class of countable groups $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ defined by the property that the largest amenable uniformly recurrent subgroup ${\mathcal{A}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}}$ is continuous. When ${\mathcal{A}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}}$ comes from an extremely proximal action and the envelope of ${\mathcal{A}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}}$ is coamenable in $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$, we obtain restrictions on the locally compact groups $G$ that contain a copy of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ as a lattice, notably regarding normal subgroups of $G$, product decompositions of $G$, and more generally dense mappings from $G$ to a product of locally compact groups.

We study lattices in a product $G=G_{1}\times \cdots \times G_{n}$ of non-discrete, compactly generated, totally disconnected locally compact (tdlc) groups. We assume that each factor is quasi just-non-compact, meaning that $G_{i}$ is non-compact and every closed normal subgroup of $G_{i}$ is discrete or cocompact (e.g. $G_{i}$ is topologically simple). We show that the set of discrete subgroups of $G$ containing a fixed cocompact lattice $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ with dense projections is finite. The same result holds if $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ is non-uniform, provided $G$ has Kazhdan’s property (T). We show that for any compact subset $K\subset G$, the collection of discrete subgroups $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\leqslant G$ with $G=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}K$ and dense projections is uniformly discrete and hence of covolume bounded away from $0$. When the ambient group $G$ is compactly presented, we show in addition that the collection of those lattices falls into finitely many $\operatorname{Aut}(G)$-orbits. As an application, we establish finiteness results for discrete groups acting on products of locally finite graphs with semiprimitive local action on each factor. We also present several intermediate results of independent interest. Notably it is shown that if a non-discrete, compactly generated quasi just-non-compact tdlc group $G$ is a Chabauty limit of discrete subgroups, then some compact open subgroup of $G$ is an infinitely generated pro-$p$ group for some prime $p$. It is also shown that in any Kazhdan group with discrete amenable radical, the lattices form an open subset of the Chabauty space of closed subgroups.

Wreath products of nondiscrete locally compact groups are usually not locally compact groups, nor even topological groups. As a substitute introduce a natural extension of the wreath product construction to the setting of locally compact groups. Applying this construction, we disprove a conjecture of Trofimov, constructing compactly generated locally compact groups of intermediate growth without any open compact normal subgroup.

Let $T$ be a locally finite tree without vertices of degree $1$. We show that among the closed subgroups of $\text{Aut}(T)$ acting with a bounded number of orbits, the Chabauty-closure of the set of topologically simple groups is the set of groups without proper open subgroup of finite index. Moreover, if all vertices of $T$ have degree ${\geqslant}3$, then the set of isomorphism classes of topologically simple closed subgroups of $\text{Aut}(T)$ acting doubly transitively on $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}T$ carries a natural compact Hausdorff topology inherited from Chabauty. Some of our considerations are valid in the context of automorphism groups of locally finite connected graphs. Applications to Weyl-transitive automorphism groups of buildings are also presented.

The century-old extremal problem, solved by Carathéodory and Fejér, concerns a non-negative trigonometric polynomial $T(t) = a_0 + \sum\nolimits_{k = 1}^n {a_k} \cos (2\pi kt) + b_k\sin (2\pi kt){\ge}0$, normalized by a0=1, where the quantity to be maximized is the coefficient a1 of cos (2π t). Carathéodory and Fejér found that for any given degree n, the maximum is 2 cos(π/n+2). In the complex exponential form, the coefficient sequence (ck) ⊂ ℂ will be supported in [−n, n] and normalized by c0=1. Reformulating, non-negativity of T translates to positive definiteness of the sequence (ck), and the extremal problem becomes a maximization problem for the value at 1 of a normalized positive definite function c: ℤ → ℂ, supported in [−n, n]. Boas and Kac, Arestov, Berdysheva and Berens, Kolountzakis and Révész and, recently, Krenedits and Révész investigated the problem in increasing generality, reaching analogous results for all locally compact abelian groups. We prove an extension to all the known results in not necessarily commutative locally compact groups.

For unimodular semidirect products of locally compact amenable groups $N$ and $H$, we show that one can always construct a Følner net of the form $({{A}_{\alpha }}\,\times \,{{B}_{\beta }})$ for $G$, where $({{A}_{\alpha }})$ is a strong form of Følner net for $N$ and $({{B}_{\beta }})$ is any Følner net for $H$. Applications to the Heisenberg and Euclidean motion groups are provided.

The decomposability number of a von Neumann algebra $\mathcal{M}$ (denoted by $\text{dec}\left( \mathcal{M} \right)$) is the greatest cardinality of a family of pairwise orthogonal non-zero projections in $\mathcal{M}$. In this paper, we explore the close connection between $\text{dec}\left( \mathcal{M} \right)$ and the cardinal level of the Mazur property for the predual ${{\mathcal{M}}_{*}}$ of $\mathcal{M}$, the study of which was initiated by the second author. Here, our main focus is on those von Neumann algebras whose preduals constitute such important Banach algebras on a locally compact group $G$ as the group algebra ${{L}_{1}}(G)$, the Fourier algebra $A(G)$, the measure algebra $M(G)$, the algebra $LUC{{(G)}^{*}}$, etc. We show that for any of these von Neumann algebras, say $\mathcal{M}$, the cardinal number dec$(\mathcal{M})$ and a certain cardinal level of the Mazur property of ${{\mathcal{M}}_{*}}$ are completely encoded in the underlying group structure. In fact, they can be expressed precisely by two dual cardinal invariants of $G$: the compact covering number $\kappa (G)$ of $G$ and the least cardinality $\mathcal{X}(G)$ of an open basis at the identity of $G$. We also present an application of the Mazur property of higher level to the topological centre problem for the Banach algebra $A{{(G)}^{**}}$.

For a topological group $G$ we define $\cal N$ to be the set of all normal subgroups modulo which $G$ is a finite-dimensional Lie group. Call $G$ a pro-Lie group if, firstly, $G$ is complete, secondly, $\cal N$ is a filter basis, and thirdly, every identity neighborhood of $G$ contains some member of $\cal N$. It is easy to see that every pro-Lie group $G$ is a projective limit of the projective system of all quotients of $G$ modulo subgroups from $\cal N$. The converse implication emerges as a difficult proposition, but it is shown here that any projective limit of finite-dimensional Lie groups is a pro-Lie group. It is also shown that a closed subgroup of a pro-Lie group is a pro-Lie group, and that for any closed normal subgroup $N$ of a pro-Lie group $G$, for any one parameter subgroup $Y \colon \mathbb{R} \to G/N$ there is a one parameter subgroup $X \colon \mathbb{R}\to G$ such that $X(t) N = Y(t)$ for any real number $t$. The category of all pro-Lie groups and continuous group homomorphisms between them is closed under the formation of all limits in the category of topological groups and the Lie algebra functor on the category of pro-Lie groups preserves all limits and quotients.

Willis's structure theory of totally disconnected locally compact groups is investigated in the context of permutation actions. This leads to new interpretations of the basic concepts in the theory and also to new proofs of the fundamental theorems and to several new results. The treatment of Willis's theory is self-contained and full proofs are given of all the fundamental results.

Suppose that Gis a locally compact group with modular function Δ and that p, q, r are three numbers in the interval (l,∞) satisfying . If cp,q(G) is the smallest constant c such that for all functions f, g ∈ Cc(G) (here the convolution product is with respect to left Haar measure and is the exponent which is conjugate to p) then Young's inequality asserts that cp,q(G) ≤ 1. This paper contains three results about these constants. Firstly, if G contains a compact open subgroup then cp,q(G) = 1 and, as an extension of an earlier result of J. J. F. Fournier, it is shown that there is a constant cp,q < 1 such that if G does not contain a compact open subgroup then c<(G) ≤ c≤. Secondly, Beckner's calculation of is used to obtain the value of cp,q(G) for all simply-connected solvable Lie groups and all nilpotent Lie groups. And thirdly, it is shown that for a nilpotent Lie group the set is not contained in the union of the spaces Ls(G), .

Let G be a connected amenable locally compact group with left Haar measure λ. In an earlier work Jenkins claimed that exponential boundedness of G is equivalent to each of the following conditions: (a) every open subsemigroup S ⊆ G is amenable; (b) given and a compact K ⊆ G with nonempty interior there exists an integer n such that (c) given a signed measure of compact support and nonnegative nonzero f ∈ L∞(G), the condition v * f ≥ 0 implies v(G) ≥ 0. However, Jenkins‚ proof of this equivalence is not complete. We give a complete proof. The crucial part of the argument relies on the following two results: (1) an open σ-compact subsemigroup S ⊆ G is amenable if and only if there exists an absolutely continuous probability measure μ on S such that lim for every s ∈ S; (2) G is exponentially bounded if and only if for every nonempty open subset U ⊆ G.