Embedding universality for II$_1$ factors with property (T)

Abstract

We prove that every separable tracial von Neumann algebra embeds into a II$_1$ factor with property (T) which can be taken to have trivial outer automorphism and fundamental groups. We also establish an analogous result for the trivial extension over a non-atomic probability space of every countable p.m.p. equivalence relation. These results are obtained by using the class of wreath-like product groups introduced recently in \cite{CIOS21}.