CONTINUOUS ASSOCIATION SCHEMES AND HYPERGROUPS

Classical finite association schemes lead to finite-dimensional algebras which are generated by finitely many stochastic matrices. Moreover, there exist associated finite hypergroups. The notion of classical discrete association schemes can be easily extended to the possibly infinite case. Moreover, this notion can be relaxed slightly by using suitably deformed families of stochastic matrices by skipping the integrality conditions. This leads to a larger class of examples which are again associated with discrete hypergroups. In this paper we propose a topological generalization of association schemes by using a locally compact basis space $X$ and a family of Markov-kernels on $X$ indexed by some locally compact space $D$ where the supports of the associated probability measures satisfy some partition property. These objects, called continuous association schemes, will be related to hypergroup structures on $D$ . We study some basic results for this notion and present several classes of examples. It turns out that, for a given commutative hypergroup, the existence of a related continuous association scheme implies that the hypergroup has many features of a double coset hypergroup. We, in particular, show that commutative hypergroups, which are associated with commutative continuous association schemes, carry dual positive product formulas for the characters. On the other hand, we prove some rigidity results in particular in the compact case which say that for given spaces $X,D$ there are only a few continuous association schemes.

Generalized hypergroups and orthogonal polynomials

The concept of semi-bounded generalized hypergroups (SBG hypergroups) is developed. These hypergroups are more special than generalized hypergroups introduced by Obata and Wildberger and more general than discrete hypergroups or even discrete signed hypergroups. The convolution of measures and functions is studied. In the case of commutativity we define the dual objects and prove some basic theorems of Fourier analysis. Furthermore, we investigate the relationship between orthogonal polynomials and generalized hypergroups. We discuss the Jacobi polynomials as an example.

Compact Almost Discrete Hypergroups

A compact hypergroup is called almost discrete if it is homeomorphic to the one-point-compactification of a countably infinite discrete set. If the group Up of all p-adic units acts multiplicatively on the p-adic integers, then the associated compact orbit hypergroup has this property. In this paper we start with an exact projective sequence of finite hypergroups and use successive substitution to construct a new surjective projective system of finite hypergroups whose limit is almost discrete. We prove that all compact almost discrete hypergroups appear in this way—up to isomorphism and up to a technical restriction. We also determine the duals of these hypergroups, and we present some examples coming from partitions of compact totally disconnected groups.