Entropy, products, and bounded orbit equivalence

We prove that if two topologically free and entropy regular actions of countable sofic groups on compact metrizable spaces are continuously orbit equivalent, and each group either (i) contains a w-normal amenable subgroup which is neither locally finite nor virtually cyclic, or (ii) is a non-locally-finite product of two infinite groups, then the actions have the same sofic topological entropy. This fact is then used to show that if two free uniquely ergodic and entropy regular probability-measure-preserving actions of such groups are boundedly orbit equivalent then the actions have the same sofic measure entropy. Our arguments are based on a relativization of property SC to sofic approximations and yield more general entropy inequalities.

On Ultraproduct Embeddings and Amenability for Tracial von Neumann Algebras

We define the notion of self-tracial stability for tracial von Neumann algebras and show that a tracial von Neumann algebra satisfying the Connes embedding problem (CEP) is self-tracially stable if and only if it is amenable. We then generalize a result of Jung by showing that a separable tracial von Neumann algebra that satisfies the CEP is amenable if and only if any two embeddings into $R^{\mathcal{U}}$ are ucp-conjugate. Moreover, we show that for a II$_1$ factor $N$ satisfying CEP, the space $\mathbb{H}$om$(N, \prod _{k\to \mathcal{U}}M_k)$ of unitary equivalence classes of embeddings is separable if and only $N$ is hyperfinite. This resolves a question of Popa for Connes embeddable factors. These results hold when we further ask that the pairs of embeddings commute, admitting a nontrivial action of $\textrm{Out}(N\otimes N)$ on ${\mathbb{H}}\textrm{om}(N\otimes N, \prod _{k\to \mathcal{U}}M_k)$ whenever $N$ is non-amenable. We also obtain an analogous result for commuting sofic representations of countable sofic groups.

Unrestricted wreath products and sofic groups

We show that the unrestricted wreath product of a sofic group by an amenable group is sofic. We use this result to present an alternative proof of the known fact that any group extension with sofic kernel and amenable quotient is again a sofic group. Our approach exploits the famous Kaloujnine–Krasner theorem and extends, with an additional argument, to hyperlinear-by-amenable groups.

Local and doubly empirical convergence and the entropy of algebraic actions of sofic groups

Let $G$ be a sofic group and $X$ a compact group with $G\curvearrowright X$ by automorphisms. Using (and reformulating) the notion of local and doubly empirical convergence developed by Austin, we show that in many cases the topological and the measure-theoretic entropy with respect to the Haar measure of $G\curvearrowright X$ agree. Our method of proof recovers all known examples. Moreover, the proofs are direct and do not go through explicitly computing the measure-theoretic or topological entropy.

The Geometry of Model Spaces for Probability-Preserving Actions of Sofic Groups

Bowen’s notion of sofic entropy is a powerful invariant for classifying probability-preserving actions of sofic groups. It can be defined in terms of the covering numbers of certain metric spaces associated to such an action, the ‘model spaces’. The metric geometry of these model spaces can exhibit various interesting features, some of which provide other invariants of the action. This paper explores an approximate connectedness property of the model spaces, and uses it give a new proof that certain groups admit factors of Bernoulli shifts which are not Bernoulli. This was originally proved by Popa. Our proof covers fewer examples than his, but provides additional information about this phenomenon.