We investigate factoriality, Connes' type III invariants and fullness of arbitrary amalgamated free product von Neumann algebras using Popa's deformation/rigidity theory. Among other things, we generalize many previous structural results on amalgamated free product von Neumann algebras and we obtain new examples of full amalgamated free product factors for which we can explicitely compute Connes' type III invariants.

We obtain a spectral gap characterization of strongly ergodic equivalence relations on standard measure spaces. We use our spectral gap criterion to prove that a large class of skew-product equivalence relations arising from measurable $1$ -cocycles with values in locally compact abelian groups are strongly ergodic. By analogy with the work of Connes on full factors, we introduce the Sd and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}$ invariants for type $\text{III}$ strongly ergodic equivalence relations. As a corollary to our main results, we show that for any type $\text{III}_{1}$ ergodic equivalence relation ${\mathcal{R}}$ , the Maharam extension $\text{c}({\mathcal{R}})$ is strongly ergodic if and only if ${\mathcal{R}}$ is strongly ergodic and the invariant $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}({\mathcal{R}})$ is the usual topology on $\mathbb{R}$ . We also obtain a structure theorem for almost periodic strongly ergodic equivalence relations analogous to Connes’ structure theorem for almost periodic full factors. Finally, we prove that for arbitrary strongly ergodic free actions of bi-exact groups (e.g. hyperbolic groups), the Sd and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}$ invariants of the orbit equivalence relation and of the associated group measure space von Neumann factor coincide.

Let $I$ be any nonempty set and let $(M_{i},\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}_{i})_{i\in I}$ be any family of nonamenable factors, endowed with arbitrary faithful normal states, that belong to a large class ${\mathcal{C}}_{\text{anti}\text{-}\text{free}}$ of (possibly type $\text{III}$ ) von Neumann algebras including all nonprime factors, all nonfull factors and all factors possessing Cartan subalgebras. For the free product $(M,\unicode[STIX]{x1D711})=\ast _{i\in I}(M_{i},\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}_{i})$ , we show that the free product von Neumann algebra $M$ retains the cardinality $|I|$ and each nonamenable factor $M_{i}$ up to stably inner conjugacy, after permutation of the indices. Our main theorem unifies all previous Kurosh-type rigidity results for free product type $\text{II}_{1}$ factors and is new for free product type $\text{III}$ factors. It moreover provides new rigidity phenomena for type $\text{III}$ factors.

Let (M, ϕ) = (M 1, ϕ1) * (M 2, ϕ2) be the free product of any σ-finite von Neumann algebras endowed with any faithful normal states. We show that whenever Q ⊂ M is a von Neumann subalgebra with separable predual such that both Q and Q ∩ M 1 are the ranges of faithful normal conditional expectations and such that both the intersection Q ∩ M 1 and the central sequence algebra Q′ ∩ Mω are diffuse (e.g. Q is amenable), then Q must sit inside M 1. This result generalizes the previous results of the first named author in [Ho14] and moreover completely settles the questions of maximal amenability and maximal property Gamma of the inclusion M 1 ⊂ M in arbitrary free product von Neumann algebras.

We investigate Cartan subalgebras in nontracial amalgamated free product von Neumann algebras ${\mathop{M{}_{1} \ast }\nolimits}_{B} {M}_{2} $ over an amenable von Neumann subalgebra $B$ . First, we settle the problem of the absence of Cartan subalgebra in arbitrary free product von Neumann algebras. Namely, we show that any nonamenable free product von Neumann algebra $({M}_{1} , {\varphi }_{1} )\ast ({M}_{2} , {\varphi }_{2} )$ with respect to faithful normal states has no Cartan subalgebra. This generalizes the tracial case that was established by A. Ioana [Cartan subalgebras of amalgamated free product  ${\mathrm{II} }_{1} $ factors, arXiv:1207.0054]. Next, we prove that any countable nonsingular ergodic equivalence relation $ \mathcal{R} $ defined on a standard measure space and which splits as the free product $ \mathcal{R} = { \mathcal{R} }_{1} \ast { \mathcal{R} }_{2} $ of recurrent subequivalence relations gives rise to a nonamenable factor $\mathrm{L} ( \mathcal{R} )$ with a unique Cartan subalgebra, up to unitary conjugacy. Finally, we prove unique Cartan decomposition for a class of group measure space factors ${\mathrm{L} }^{\infty } (X)\rtimes \Gamma $ arising from nonsingular free ergodic actions $\Gamma \curvearrowright (X, \mu )$ on standard measure spaces of amalgamated groups $\Gamma = {\mathop{\Gamma {}_{1} \ast }\nolimits}_{\Sigma } {\Gamma }_{2} $ over a finite subgroup $\Sigma $ .

We show that for any type III1 free Araki–Woods factor = (HR, Ut)″ associated with an orthogonal representation (Ut) of R on a separable real Hilbert space HR, the continuous core M = ⋊σR is a semisolid II∞ factor, i.e. for any non-zero finite projection q ∈ M, the II1 factor qM q is semisolid. If the representation (Ut) is moreover assumed to be mixing, then we prove that the core M is solid. As an application, we construct an example of a non-amenable solid II1 factor N with full fundamental group, i.e. (N) = R*+, which is not isomorphic to any interpolated free group factor L(Ft), for 1 < t ≤ = +∞.