The expected degree of minimal spanning forests

Abstract

We give a lower bound on the expected degree of the free minimal spanning forest of a vertex transitive graph in terms of its spectral radius. This result answers a question of Lyons-Peres-Schramm and simplifies the Gaboriau-Lyons proof of the measurable-group-theoretic solution to von Neumann's problem. In the second part we study a relative version of the free minimal spanning forest. As a consequence of this study we can show that non-torsion unitarizable groups have fixed price one.