A non-locally trivial $\mathrm{W}^*$-bundle with fixed factorial fibres

Abstract

In this paper we construct the first example of a non-locally trivial $\mathrm{W}^*$-bundle whose fibres are all isomorphic to some fixed $\mathrm{II}_1$ factor. This is achieved by introducing a notion of uniformly having spectral gap for $\mathrm{W}^*$-bundles. For bundles with fixed factorial fibres, the negation of having this uniform spectral gap property provides an obstruction for being locally trivial. This results in seemingly elementary examples of $\mathrm{W}^*$-bundles whose fibres are all isomorphic to some fixed factor but that are not locally trivial, even over spaces with covering dimension equal to zero.