We introduce and study the notions of boundary actions and the Furstenberg
boundary of a discrete quantum group. As for classical groups, properties of
boundary actions turn out to encode significant properties of the operator algebras
associated with the discrete quantum group in question; for example we prove that
if the action on the Furstenberg boundary is faithful, the quantum group
-algebra
admits at most one KMS-state for the scaling automorphism group. To obtain these
results we develop a version of Hamana’s theory of injective envelopes for quantum
group actions and establish several facts on relative amenability for quantum
subgroups. We then show that the Gromov boundary actions of free orthogonal
quantum groups, as studied by Vaes and Vergnioux, are also boundary actions in our
sense; we obtain this by proving that these actions admit unique stationary
states. Moreover, we prove these actions are faithful, and hence conclude
a new unique KMS-state property in the general case and a new proof of
unique trace property when restricted to the unimodular case. We prove
equivalence of simplicity of the crossed products of all boundary actions of a given
discrete quantum group, and use it to obtain a new simplicity result for the
crossed product of the Gromov boundary actions of free orthogonal quantum
groups.
Keywords
discrete quantum group, quantum group action,
noncommutative boundary, free orthogonal quantum group