Towards Strong Banach property (T) for SL(3,R)

Abstract

We prove that SL(3,R) has Strong Banach property (T) in Lafforgue's sense with respect to the Banach spaces that are $\theta>0$ interpolation spaces (for the complex interpolation method) between an arbitrary Banach space and a Banach space with sufficiently good type and cotype. As a consequence, every action of SL(3,R) or its lattices by affine isometries on such a Banach space X has a fixed point, and the expanders contructed from SL(3,Z) do not admit a coarse embedding into X. We also prove a quantitative decay of matrix coefficients (Howe-Moore property) for representations with small exponential growth of SL(3,R) on X. This class of Banach spaces contains many superreflexive spaces and some nonreflexive spaces as well. We see no obstruction for this class to be equal to all spaces with nontrivial type.