Rational discrete first degree cohomology for totally disconnected locally compact groups

Abstract

AbstractIt is well known that the existence of more than two ends in the sense of J.R. Stallings for a finitely generated discrete group G can be detected on the cohomology group H1(G,R[G]), where R is either a finite field, the ring of integers or the field of rational numbers. It will be shown (cf. Theorem A*) that for a compactly generated totally disconnected locally compact group G the same information about the number of ends of G in the sense of H. Abels can be provided by dH1(G, Bi(G)), where Bi(G) is the rational discrete standard bimodule of G, and dH•(G, _) denotes rational discrete cohomology as introduced in [6].As a consequence one has that the class of fundamental groups of a finite graph of profinite groups coincides with the class of compactly presented totally disconnected locally compact groups of rational discrete cohomological dimension at most 1 (cf. Theorem B).