For any unital separable simple infinite-dimensional nuclear$C$^{∗}-algebra with finitely many extremal traces, we prove that $$ \mathcal{Z} $$ -absorption, strict comparison and property (SI) are equivalent. We also show that any unital separable simple nuclear$C$^{∗}-algebra with tracial rank zero is approximately divisible, and hence is $$ \mathcal{Z} $$ -absorbing.

We prove the BMV (Bessis, Moussa, Villani, [1]) conjecture, which states that the function $${t \mapsto \mathop{\rm Tr}\exp(A-tB)}$$ , $${t \geqslant 0}$$ , is the Laplace transform of a positive measure on [0,∞) if$A$and$B$are $${n \times n}$$ Hermitian matrices and$B$is positive semidefinite. A semi-explicit representation for this measure is given.

It is known that finitely generated FI-modules over a field of characteristic 0 are Noetherian. We generalize this result to the abstract setting of an infinite EI category satisfying certain combinatorial conditions.

We give bounds for various homological invariants (including Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity, degrees of local cohomology, and injective dimension) of finitely generated VI-modules in the non-describing characteristic case. It turns out that the formulas of these bounds for VI-modules are the same as the formulas of corresponding bounds for FI-modules.

We give two homological proofs of the Noetherianity of the category FI, a fundamental result discovered by Church, Ellenberg, Farb, and Nagpal.