Generic representations of abelian groups and extreme amenability

Abstract

If $G$ is a Polish group and $\Gamma$ is a countable group, denote by $\Hom(\Gamma, G)$ the space of all homomorphisms $\Gamma \to G$. We study properties of the group $\cl{\pi(\Gamma)}$ for the generic $\pi \in \Hom(\Gamma, G)$, when $\Gamma$ is abelian and $G$ is one of the following three groups: the unitary group of an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, the automorphism group of a standard probability space, and the isometry group of the Urysohn metric space. Under mild assumptions on $\Gamma$, we prove that in the first case, there is (up to isomorphism of topological groups) a unique generic $\cl{\pi(\Gamma)}$; in the other two, we show that the generic $\cl{\pi(\Gamma)}$ is extremely amenable. We also show that if $\Gamma$ is torsion-free, the centralizer of the generic $\pi$ is as small as possible, extending a result of King from ergodic theory.