Point derivations and cohomologies of Lipschitz algebras

For a compact metric space (K, d), LipK denotes the Banach algebra of all complex-valued Lipschitz functions on (K, d). We show that the continuous Hochschild cohomology Hn(LipK, (LipK)*) and Hn(LipK, ℂe) are both infinite-dimensional vector spaces for each n ≥ 1 if the space K contains a certain infinite sequence which converges to a point e ∈ K. Here (LipK)* is the dual module of LipK and ℂe denotes the complex numbers with a LipK-bimodule structure defined by evaluations of LipK-functions at e. Examples of such metric spaces include all compact Riemannian manifolds, compact geodesic metric spaces and infinite compact subsets of ℝ. In particular, the (small) global homological dimension of LipK is infinite for every such space. Our proof uses the description of point derivations by Sherbert [‘The structure of ideals and point derivations in Banach algebras of Lipschitz functions’, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc.111 (1964), 240–272] and directly constructs non-trivial cocycles with the help of alternating cocycles of Johnson [‘Higher-dimensional weak amenability’, Studia Math.123 (1997), 117–134]. An alternating construction of cocycles on the basis of the idea of Kleshchev [‘Homological dimension of Banach algebras of smooth functions is equal to infinity’, Vest. Math. Mosk. Univ. Ser. 1. Mat. Mech.6 (1988), 57–60] is also discussed.