Free actions of free groups on countable structures and property (T)

David M. Evans, Todor Tsankov

Published 2013-12-18, updated 2015-09-02Version 2

We show that if $G$ is a non-archimedean, Roelcke precompact, Polish group, then $G$ has Kazhdan's property (T). Moreover, if $G$ has a smallest open subgroup of finite index, then $G$ has a finite Kazhdan set. Examples of such $G$ include automorphism groups of countable $\omega$-categorical structures, that is, the closed, oligomorphic permutation groups on a countable set. The proof uses work of the second author on the unitary representations of such groups, together with a separation result for infinite permutation groups. The latter allows the construction of a non-abelian free subgroup of $G$ acting freely in all infinite transitive permutation representations of $G$.