Search

Answering a question by Chatterji–Druţu–Haglund, we prove that, for every locally compact group $G$ , there exists a critical constant $p_G \in [0,\infty ]$ such that $G$ admits a continuous affine isometric action on an $L_p$ space ($0) with unbounded orbits if and only if $p \geq p_G$. A similar result holds for the existence of proper continuous affine isometric actions on $L_p$ spaces. Using a representation of cohomology by harmonic cocycles, we also show that such unbounded orbits cannot occur when the linear part comes from a measure-preserving action, or more generally a state-preserving action on a von Neumann algebra and $p>2$. We also prove the stability of this critical constant $p_G$ under $L_p$ measure equivalence, answering a question of Fisher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive amenability is a property of group actions which has recently been used as a tool to prove amenability of groups. We study this property and prove that it is preserved under a very general construction of semidirect products. As an application, we establish the amenability of all subgroups of the group IET of interval exchange transformations that have angular components of rational rank less than or equal to two. In addition, we obtain a reformulation of extensive amenability in terms of inverted orbits and use it to present a purely probabilistic proof that recurrent actions are extensively amenable. Finally, we study the triviality of the Poisson boundary for random walks on IET and show that there are subgroups G < IET admitting no finitely supported measure with trivial boundary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]