This paper considers the large N limit of Wilson loops for the two-dimensional Euclidean Yang–Mills measure on all orientable compact surfaces of genus larger or equal to $1$, with a structure group given by a classical compact matrix Lie group. Our main theorem shows the convergence of all Wilson loops in probability, given that it holds true on a restricted class of loops, obtained as a modification of geodesic paths. Combined with the result of [20], a corollary is the convergence of all Wilson loops on the torus. Unlike the sphere case, we show that the limiting object is remarkably expressed thanks to the master field on the plane defined in [3, 39], and we conjecture that this phenomenon is also valid for all surfaces of higher genus. We prove that this conjecture holds true whenever it does for the restricted class of loops of the main theorem. Our result on the torus justifies the introduction of an interpolation between free and classical convolution of probability measures, defined with the free unitary Brownian motion but differing from t-freeness of [5] that was defined in terms of the liberation process of Voiculescu [67]. In contrast to [20], our main tool is a fine use of Makeenko–Migdal equations, proving uniqueness of their solution under suitable assumptions, and generalising the arguments of [21, 33].

We establish a Central Limit Theorem for tensor product random variables $c_k:=a_k \otimes a_k$, where $(a_k)_{k \in \mathbb {N}}$ is a free family of variables. We show that if the variables $a_k$ are centered, the limiting law is the semi-circle. Otherwise, the limiting law depends on the mean and variance of the variables $a_k$ and corresponds to a free interpolation between the semi-circle law and the classical convolution of two semi-circle laws.

The subject of this article is operators represented on a Fock space which act only on the two leading components of the tensor. We unify the constructions from [Ans07, BL09, BL11, LS08] and extend a number of results from these articles to our more general setting. The results include the quadratic relation satisfied by the kernel of the free cumulant generating function, the resolvent form of the generating function for the Wick polynomials, and classification results for the case when the vacuum state on the operator algebra is tracial. We handle the generating functions in infinitely many variables by considering their matrix-valued versions.

We prove novel asymptotic freeness results in tracial ultraproduct von Neumann algebras. In particular, we show that whenever $M = M_1 \ast M_2$ is a tracial free product von Neumann algebra and $u_1 \in \mathscr U(M_1)$, $u_2 \in \mathscr U(M_2)$ are Haar unitaries, the relative commutants $\{u_1\}' \cap M^{\mathcal U}$ and $\{u_2\}' \cap M^{\mathcal U}$ are freely independent in the ultraproduct $M^{\mathcal U}$. Our proof relies on Mei–Ricard’s results [MR16] regarding $\operatorname {L}^p$-boundedness (for all $1 < p < +\infty $) of certain Fourier multipliers in tracial amalgamated free products von Neumann algebras. We derive two applications. Firstly, we obtain a general absorption result in tracial amalgamated free products that recovers several previous maximal amenability/Gamma absorption results. Secondly, we prove a new lifting theorem which we combine with our asymptotic freeness results and Chifan–Ioana–Kunnawalkam Elayavalli’s recent construction [CIKE22] to provide the first example of a $\mathrm {II_1}$ factor that does not have property Gamma and is not elementary equivalent to any free product of diffuse tracial von Neumann algebras.

We discuss the class of functions, which are well approximated on compacta by the geometric mean of the eigenvalues of a unital (completely) positive map into a matrix algebra or more generally a type $II_1$ factor, using the notion of a Fuglede–Kadison determinant. In two variables, the two classes are the same, but in three or more noncommuting variables, there are generally functions arising from type $II_1$ von Neumann algebras, due to the recently established failure of the Connes embedding conjecture. The question of whether or not approximability holds for scalar inputs is shown to be equivalent to a restricted form of the Connes embedding conjecture, the so-called shuffle-word-embedding conjecture.

In this paper, a notion of non-microstate bi-free entropy with respect to completely positive maps is constructed thereby extending the notions of non-microstate bi-free entropy and free entropy with respect to a completely positive map. By extending the operator-valued bi-free structures to allow for more analytical arguments, a notion of conjugate variables is constructed using both moment and cumulant expressions. The notions of free Fisher information and entropy are then extended to this setting and used to show minima of the Fisher information and maxima of the non-microstate bi-free entropy at bi-R-diagonal elements.

We use tools from free probability to study the spectra of Hermitian operators on infinite graphs. Special attention is devoted to universal covering trees of finite graphs. For operators on these graphs, we derive a new variational formula for the spectral radius and provide new proofs of results due to Sunada and Aomoto using free probability.

With the goal of extending the applicability of free probability techniques beyond universal covering trees, we introduce a new combinatorial product operation on graphs and show that, in the noncommutative probability context, it corresponds to the notion of freeness with amalgamation. We show that Cayley graphs of amalgamated free products of groups, as well as universal covering trees, can be constructed using our graph product.

Wick polynomials and Wick products are studied in the context of noncommutative probability theory. It is shown that free, Boolean, and conditionally free Wick polynomials can be defined and related through the action of the group of characters over a particular Hopf algebra. These results generalize our previous developments of a Hopf-algebraic approach to cumulants and Wick products in classical probability theory.

Bożejko and Speicher associated a finite von Neumann algebra MT to a self-adjoint operator T on a complex Hilbert space of the form $\mathcal {H}\otimes \mathcal {H}$ which satisfies the Yang–Baxter relation and $ \left\| T \right\| < 1$. We show that if dim$(\mathcal {H})$ ⩾ 2, then MT is a factor when T admits an eigenvector of some special form.

We investigate the concept of orbital free entropy from the viewpoint of the matrix liberation process. We will show that many basic questions around the definition of orbital free entropy are reduced to the question of full large deviation principle for the matrix liberation process. We will also obtain a large deviation upper bound for a certain family of random matrices that is essential to define the orbital free entropy. The resulting rate function is made up into a new approach to free mutual information.

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 show that the partial transposes of complex Wishart random matrices are asymptotically free. We also investigate regimes where the number of blocks is fixed but the size of the blocks increases. This gives an example where the partial transpose produces freeness at the operator level. Finally, we investigate the case of real Wishart matrices.

In this paper, we perform a detailed spectral study of the liberation process associated with two symmetries of arbitrary ranks: $(R,S)\mapsto (R,U_{t}SU_{t}^{\ast })_{t\geqslant 0}$, where $(U_{t})_{t\geqslant 0}$ is a free unitary Brownian motion freely independent from $\{R,S\}$. Our main tool is free stochastic calculus which allows to derive a partial differential equation (PDE) for the Herglotz transform of the unitary process defined by $Y_{t}:=RU_{t}SU_{t}^{\ast }$. It turns out that this is exactly the PDE governing the flow of an analytic function transform of the spectral measure of the operator $X_{t}:=PU_{t}QU_{t}^{\ast }P$ where $P,Q$ are the orthogonal projections associated to $R,S$. Next, we relate the two spectral measures of $RU_{t}SU_{t}^{\ast }$ and of $PU_{t}QU_{t}^{\ast }P$ via their moment sequences and use this relationship to develop a theory of subordination for the boundary values of the Herglotz transform. In particular, we explicitly compute the subordinate function and extend its inverse continuously to the unit circle. As an application, we prove the identity $i^{\ast }(\mathbb{C}P+\mathbb{C}(I-P);\mathbb{C}Q+\mathbb{C}(I-Q))=-\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}_{\text{orb}}(P,Q)$.

For any family of $N\,\times \,N$ random matrices ${{\left( {{\text{A}}_{k}} \right)}_{k\in K}}$ that is invariant, in law, under unitary conjugation, we give general sufficient conditions for central limit theorems for random variables of the type $\text{Tr}\left( {{\text{A}}_{k}}\text{M} \right)$, where the matrix $\text{M}$ is deterministic (such random variables include, for example, the normalized matrix entries of ${{\text{A}}_{k}}$). A consequence is the asymptotic independence of the projection of the matrices ${{\text{A}}_{k}}$ onto the subspace of null trace matrices from their projections onto the orthogonal of this subspace. These results are used to study the asymptotic behavior of the outliers of a spiked elliptic random matrix. More precisely, we show that the fluctuations of these outliers around their limits can have various rates of convergence, depending on the Jordan Canonical Form of the additive perturbation. Also, some correlations can arise between outliers at a macroscopic distance from each other.These phenomena have already been observed with random matrices from the Single Ring Theorem.

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.

We discuss the half-liberation operation X → X*, for the algebraic submanifolds of the unit sphere, $X\subset S^{N-1}_\mathbb C$. There are several ways of constructing this correspondence, and we take them into account. Our main results concern the computation of the affine quantum isometry group G+(X*), for the sphere itself.

We demonstrate that the notions of bi-free independence and combinatorial-bi-free independence of two-faced families are equivalent using a diagrammatic view of bi-non-crossing partitions. These diagrams produce an operator model on a Fock space suitable for representing any two-faced family of non-commutative random variables. Furthermore, using a Kreweras complement on bi-non-crossing partitions we establish the expected formulas for the multiplicative convolution of a bi-free pair of two-faced families.

It is known that the normalized standard generators of the free orthogonal quantum group $O_{N}^{+}$ converge in distribution to a free semicircular system as $N\,\to \,\infty$. In this note, we substantially improve this convergence result by proving that, in addition to distributional convergence, the operator normof any non-commutative polynomial in the normalized standard generators of $O_{N}^{+}$ converges as $N\,\to \,\infty$ to the operator norm of the corresponding non-commutative polynomial in a standard free semicircular system. Analogous strong convergence results are obtained for the generators of free unitary quantum groups. As applications of these results, we obtain a matrix-coefficient version of our strong convergence theorem, and we recover a well-known ${{\mathcal{L}}^{2}}\,-\,{{\mathcal{L}}^{\infty }}$ norm equivalence for noncommutative polynomials in free semicircular systems.

We investigate operator-valued monotone independence, a noncommutative version of independence for conditional expectation. First we introduce operator-valued monotone cumulants to clarify the whole theory and show the moment-cumulant formula. As an application, one can obtain an easy proof of the central limit theorem for the operator-valued case. Moreover, we prove a generalization of Muraki’s formula for the sum of independent random variables and a relation between generating functions of moments and cumulants.

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 $.