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Mackey induction classifies regular Euclidean dual actions
Statement
Assume AC. Let , let be a second-countable locally compact Hausdorff group acting continuously by linear automorphisms on , and put with the product topology and the multiplication of The external semidirect product . Let be the Pontryagin dual with . Suppose the dual -action on all of has a countable family of invariant Borel sets separating distinct orbits. For each orbit fix , let , and set . Then
is a bijection from pairs consisting of a -orbit and a unitary-equivalence class of irreducible strongly continuous unitary representations of to the equivalence classes of irreducible strongly continuous unitary representations of . Here
Changing the orbit representative conjugates the stabilizer and its representation. Different orbits give inequivalent induced representations. In the induced model the translation spectral PVM is multiplication over , transported Borelly to with the full-support quasi-invariant measure from induction; it is concentrated on the inducing orbit .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: AC, the second-countable locally compact groups and , the continuous automorphism action, the regular-orbit hypothesis, and an orbit representative .
The external semidirect product : ; the subgroup is closed when is closed.
The Pontryagin dual with the compact-open topology and The dual of a locally compact abelian group is locally compact abelian: is the locally compact Hausdorff character group with its compact-open topology, and the action is .
Mackey little-group reduction for an abelian normal subgroup: under AC, second-countable locally compact hypotheses, and countably separated dual orbits, every irreducible strongly continuous representation of is induced from for an irreducible strongly continuous of ; its proof derives separability from cyclicity and records the induced translation action over the orbit.
Mackey's imprimitivity theorem and Uniqueness in the imprimitivity theorem: every transitive system on is induced from a strongly continuous representation of , and two such systems are equivalent exactly when their inducing representations are equivalent.
Existence of rho-functions and quotient measure classes, Continuous quotient translation cocycle, and Unitary induction from a closed subgroup: on the locally compact homogeneous space a full-support quasi-invariant Radon measure exists; is the continuous Radon–Nikodym cocycle, and induction acts by as a unitary strongly continuous representation.
Borel cross-sections for closed subgroups of second-countable locally compact Hausdorff groups: for a second-countable locally compact Hausdorff group and closed subgroup, the quotient has a Borel cross-section and Borel section cocycle.
Spectral measure of a unitary representation of an abelian group, covariance, and ergodicity: the translation representation has a unique regular PVM, and an intertwiner of translation representations intertwines their spectral PVMs.
By Second countability is hereditary, a subspace of a second-countable space is second-countable; by Assuming countable choice, every second countable space is separable, any such space is separable under Countable Choice. Every second-countable locally compact Hausdorff space is standard Borel with a countably generated Borel sigma algebra, is a countable union of compact sets, and has a countable basis of relatively compact open sets (Second-countable locally compact Hausdorff spaces are Polish, and homogeneous quotients are standard Borel, In a locally compact Hausdorff space every open set containing a point contains an open set containing it whose closure is compact and still inside; such a space is regular). Here these properties are used for , , and the closed subgroup ; the orbit is only asserted to be Borel.
Separability: the existence of an at most countable dense subset: a separable Hilbert space has a countable dense subset.
Second countability: an at most countable basis for the topology, Locally compact topological space: every point has a compact neighbourhood; and what this says in a metric space, Hausdorff space: distinct points have disjoint open neighbourhoods; every metrizable space is Hausdorff and the indiscrete topology on two points is not, Left group actions, transitive actions, and faithful actions, and Continuity of a map of topological spaces at a point and globally: second countability means there is an at most countable basis; local compactness provides compact neighborhoods; Hausdorffness separates distinct points; a group action satisfies the identity and multiplication laws, and continuity is continuity of the action map.
AC is the choice-function principle The Axiom of Choice required by the displayed Mackey, induction, and spectral suppliers; restricting its choice function to countable families supplies the Countable Choice used by [F9] (The Axiom of Countable Choice (), AC implies DC implies countable choice).
Proof
Given: The hypotheses above, with AC.
Since is second-countable, locally compact, Hausdorff, and abelian, its dual has the compact-open character topology of [F2] and is locally compact Hausdorff by [F2]. The dual action is continuous: evaluation is continuous because for in an open , one may choose a compact neighborhood of inside , and then is a neighborhood mapped into . Therefore is continuous. For compact and open , the tube lemma on shows that the inverse image of the compact-open subbasic set under is open. Hence this dual action is continuous, and the assumed invariant family makes its orbit relation regular. The stabilizer is closed as the inverse image of under the continuous orbit map. It inherits a countable basis from ; if is a relatively compact open neighborhood in , then is relatively open in and its closure lies in the compact set , so is locally compact. Thus is second-countable locally compact and is closed by [F1]. The product-topology group is second-countable locally compact, so [F3] applies. Applying [F3] to an irreducible representation gives an orbit and an irreducible strongly continuous with . To verify the separability needed below, let be either or and let in its carrier. The closed span of , where or respectively, is a nonzero invariant subspace and hence the whole carrier by irreducibility. Each is second-countable; [F9] and [A1] give a countable dense subset . Strong continuity makes dense in the orbit , and finite -linear combinations of these vectors form a countable dense subset of the carrier by [F10]. Thus both and have separable carriers.
For , . Therefore, using [F1], so is a representation of . It is strongly continuous because both factors are, and is a closed subgroup.
The orbit is Borel: it is the intersection, over the countable separating invariant family, of each set containing and each complement of a set not containing ; points in have the same memberships as , and any point outside is separated by one set. The orbit map , , is a continuous bijection. Its inverse is Borel: every open subset of the second-countable locally compact quotient is a countable union of compact subsets, whose images under the orbit map are compact and hence closed in the Hausdorff dual. The map , , is a homeomorphism: translations lie in , and exactly when , since the first coordinate is in . Thus and are Borel-isomorphic, as required to use the transitive system on in [F4]. Composing this Borel identification with [F6] gives a Borel section with . In section coordinates, ; its inverse is the covariant extension . These are Borel inverse maps and preserve the quotient norm. By [F5] choose a full-support quasi-invariant Radon measure on and transport it across the Borel identification to ; write for its transported Radon–Nikodym cocycle. The section form of induction is where is the Radon–Nikodym cocycle from [F5]. To see the fibre factor, write , , and ; then . Covariance gives by the dual action definition, and . The little-group factor lies in because . The formula is Borel, and [F5] gives its unitary extension and strong continuity.
The section model is the measurable Hilbert-field realization of , with base and measure as in step 2.1. By [F9], has a countable Borel generator and an increasing compact exhaustion ; the Radon measure is finite on each . Let be the countable algebra generated by a countable basis together with the exhaustion. On each finite-measure , the class of Borel subsets approximable in symmetric-difference measure by is a sigma algebra: complements are taken relative to , finite unions preserve approximation, and countable unions are reduced to finite unions by continuity from below of the finite measure. It contains the restricted generating algebra, so it contains every Borel subset of . Therefore simple functions from this countable algebra are dense in scalar ; truncation to shows their union is dense in . Since is separable by step 1.1, finite simple functions with values in a countable dense subset of are dense in ; this set has a countable dense rational-complex span. The induced Hilbert space is therefore separable, and its closed subspaces are separable as required by [F4].
The section cocycle obeys by cancellation of , while by the dual action definition. Together with the Radon–Nikodym cocycle identity in [F5], these identities verify the semidirect-product multiplication in the displayed action. If is invariant, ; with a merely quasi-invariant , the square-root factor is essential for unitarity.
Setting in the section formula shows that each translation acts by multiplication by . The unique spectral PVM [F7] for this multiplication representation is therefore multiplication by the indicators of Borel subsets of in orbit coordinates; its value on is the identity.
Suppose the induced representation has a nonzero proper closed invariant subspace . Its orthogonal complement is nonzero and invariant: for , , and , . Hence the orthogonal projection onto commutes with , and in particular with every translation operator; uniqueness in [F7] makes it commute with the translation PVM. Thus and inherit nonzero PVMs on . Transport these PVMs along the equivariant Borel isomorphism of step 2.1 to . For either transported restriction , define . This set is closed and -invariant by covariance. It is nonempty: otherwise the countable basis of from [F9] would cover by sets with zero projection, contradicting by countable additivity. Transitivity on gives . The restrictions therefore give nonzero transitive systems of imprimitivity on , with separable carriers by step 3.1. This argument uses the quotient topology on , not any unproved topological identification with .
If two induced representations are equivalent, an intertwiner makes a regular PVM for the other translation representation, so uniqueness [F7] makes it that representation's spectral PVM. Each PVM has value on its inducing orbit by step 3.3 and vanishes on every disjoint orbit; hence equivalence forces the inducing orbits to agree. At a fixed representative , their transitive systems on are equivalent through the identification in step 2.1, and uniqueness [F4] implies their little-group representations are equivalent. Conversely an equivalence of little-group representations induces an equivalence of the covariant models by acting with the fibre unitary pointwise. If is another representative, then and conjugation by carries to , where ; the corresponding induced models are equivalent by the same change of variables. Thus the orbit and little-group class determine exactly one irreducible representation class.
Put . Any closed -invariant subspace is -invariant because , so is irreducible. The induced carrier is nonzero: full support and the Radon property give a Borel set with , and is a nonzero square-integrable section for in . If exists as in step 4.1, apply [F4] to reconstruct its two restricted systems from strongly continuous representations and of on separable fibres and . Both fibres are nonzero, since a zero fibre induces the zero system. Realize their canonical systems with the same quotient measure and section. Pointwise splitting of -valued functions is unitary and intertwines both the induced actions and the multiplication PVMs; hence the canonical system of is their direct sum, which is the original system on . Uniqueness in [F4] gives , contradicting irreducibility of . Therefore the induced representation is irreducible.
Step 1.1 yields every irreducible as one of the induced models. Steps 1.2–3.3 establish the covariant model and its orbit PVM; steps 4.1 and 5.1 prove irreducibility; step 4.2 proves the equivalence criterion. Therefore the stated map is a bijection.
Depends on
- The Axiom of Choice
- Projection valued measure
- The external semidirect product $N\rtimes_\alpha H$
- Left group actions, transitive actions, and faithful actions
- Second countability: an at most countable basis for the topology
- Locally compact topological space: every point has a compact neighbourhood; and what this says in a metric space
- Hausdorff space: distinct points have disjoint open neighbourhoods; every metrizable space is Hausdorff and the indiscrete topology on two points is not
- Continuity of a map of topological spaces at a point and globally
- The Pontryagin dual with the compact-open topology
- Strongly continuous unitary representations, invariant linear subspaces and intertwiners
- Separability: the existence of an at most countable dense subset
- Second countability: an at most countable basis for the topology
- The Axiom of Countable Choice ($\mathrm{AC}_\omega$)
- AC implies DC implies countable choice
- Assuming countable choice, every second countable space is separable
- Second countability is hereditary
- The dual of a locally compact abelian group is locally compact abelian
- Spectral measure of a unitary representation of an abelian group, covariance, and ergodicity
- Second-countable locally compact Hausdorff spaces are Polish, and homogeneous quotients are standard Borel
- Mackey's imprimitivity theorem
- Uniqueness in the imprimitivity theorem
- Mackey little-group reduction for an abelian normal subgroup
- Existence of rho-functions and quotient measure classes
- Unitary induction from a closed subgroup
- Continuous quotient translation cocycle
- Borel cross-sections for closed subgroups of second-countable locally compact Hausdorff groups
- In a locally compact Hausdorff space every open set containing a point contains an open set containing it whose closure is compact and still inside; such a space is regular
Used by
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Sources
- Xavier Bekaert and Nicolas Boulanger, The unitary representations of the Poincaré group in any spacetime dimension, v2 (2021) (standard reference, not scraped)
- Niklas Beisert, Quantum Field Theory I, Lecture Notes, ETH Zürich, 2025 HS (standard reference, not scraped)