Leavitt Path Algebras And Classical K Theory

The book offers a comprehensive introduction to Leavitt path algebras (LPAs) and graph C*-algebras. Highlighting their significant connection with classical K-theory—which plays an important role in mathematics and its related emerging fields—this book allows readers from diverse mathematical backgrounds to understand and appreciate these structures. The articles on LPAs are mostly of an expository nature and the ones dealing with K-theory provide new proofs and are accessible to interested students and beginners of the field. It is a useful resource for graduate students and researchers working in this field and related areas, such as C*-algebras and symbolic dynamics.

This book gives an account of the necessary background for group algebras and crossed products for actions of a group or a semigroup on a space and reports on some very recently developed techniques with applications to particular examples. Much of the material is available here for the first time in book form. The topics discussed are among the most classical and intensely studied C*-algebras. They are important for applications in fields as diverse as the theory of unitary group representations, index theory, the topology of manifolds or ergodic theory of group actions. Part of the most basic structural information for such a C*-algebra is contained in its K-theory. The determination of the K-groups of C*-algebras constructed from group or semigroup actions is a particularly challenging problem. Paul Baum and Alain Connes proposed a formula for the K-theory of the reduced crossed product for a group action that would permit, in principle, its computation. By work of many hands, the formula has by now been verified for very large classes of groups and this work has led to the development of a host of new techniques. An important ingredient is Kasparov's bivariant K-theory. More recently, also the C*-algebras generated by the regular representation of a semigroup as well as the crossed products for actions of semigroups by endomorphisms have been studied in more detail. Intriguing examples of actions of such semigroups come from ergodic theory as well as from algebraic number theory. The computation of the K-theory of the corresponding crossed products needs new techniques. In cases of interest the K-theory of the algebras reflects ergodic theoretic or number theoretic properties of the action.

This book provides a very elementary introduction to K-theory for C*-algebras, and is ideal for beginning graduate students.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction by three of the leading experts in the field, collecting fundamental results and open problems in a single volume. Since Leavitt path algebras were first defined in 2005, interest in these algebras has grown substantially, with ring theorists as well as researchers working in graph C*-algebras, group theory and symbolic dynamics attracted to the topic. Providing a historical perspective on the subject, the authors review existing arguments, establish new results, and outline the major themes and ring-theoretic concepts, such as the ideal structure, Z-grading and the close link between Leavitt path algebras and graph C*-algebras. The book also presents key lines of current research, including the Algebraic Kirchberg Phillips Question, various additional classification questions, and connections to noncommutative algebraic geometry. Leavitt Path Algebras will appeal to graduate students and researchers working in the field and related areas, such as C*-algebras and symbolic dynamics. With its descriptive writing style, this book is highly accessible.

Topological K-theory is one of the most important invariants for noncommutative algebras. Bott periodicity, homotopy invariance, and various long exact sequences distinguish it from algebraic K-theory. This book describes a bivariant K-theory for bornological algebras, which provides a vast generalization of topological K-theory. In addition, it details other approaches to bivariant K-theories for operator algebras. The book studies a number of applications, including K-theory of crossed products, the Baum-Connes assembly map, twisted K-theory with some of its applications, and some variants of the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem.

Representation Theory and Higher Algebraic K-Theory is the first book to present higher algebraic K-theory of orders and group rings as well as characterize higher algebraic K-theory as Mackey functors that lead to equivariant higher algebraic K-theory and their relative generalizations. Thus, this book makes computations of higher K-theory of grou

Since its inception 50 years ago, K-theory has been a tool for understanding a wide-ranging family of mathematical structures and their invariants: topological spaces, rings, algebraic varieties and operator algebras are the dominant examples. The invariants range from characteristic classes in cohomology, determinants of matrices, Chow groups of varieties, as well as traces and indices of elliptic operators. Thus K-theory is notable for its connections with other branches of mathematics. Noncommutative geometry develops tools which allow one to think of noncommutative algebras in the same footing as commutative ones: as algebras of functions on (noncommutative) spaces. The algebras in question come from problems in various areas of mathematics and mathematical physics; typical examples include algebras of pseudodifferential operators, group algebras, and other algebras arising from quantum field theory. To study noncommutative geometric problems one considers invariants of the relevant noncommutative algebras. These invariants include algebraic and topological K-theory, and also cyclic homology, discovered independently by Alain Connes and Boris Tsygan, which can be regarded both as a noncommutative version of de Rham cohomology and as an additive version of K-theory. There are primary and secondary Chern characters which pass from K-theory to cyclic homology. These characters are relevant both to noncommutative and commutative problems and have applications ranging from index theorems to the detection of singularities of commutative algebraic varieties. The contributions to this volume represent this range of connections between K-theory, noncommmutative geometry, and other branches of mathematics.