Actions of F_\infty whose II_1 factors and orbit equivalence relations have prescribed fundamental group

Abstract

We show that given any subgroup F of R_+ which is either countable or belongs to a certain "large" class of uncountable subgroups, there exist continuously many free ergodic probability measure preserving actions \sigma_i of the free group with infinitely many generators such that their associated group measure space II_1 factors M_i and orbit equivalence relations R_i have fundamental group equal to F and with M_i (respectively R_i) stably non-isomorphic. Moreover, these actions can be taken so that R_i has no outer automorphisms and any automorphism of M_i is unitary conjugate to an automorphism that acts trivially on $L^\infty(X_i) \subset M_i$.