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In this paper, we introduce a property of topological dynamical systems that we call finite dynamical complexity. For systems with this property, one can in principle compute the K-theory of the associated crossed product C*-algebra by splitting it up into simpler pieces and using the methods of controlled K-theory. The main part of the paper illustrates this idea by giving a new proof of the Baum-Connes conjecture for actions with finite dynamical complexity. We have tried to keep the paper as self-contained as possible: we hope the main part will be accessible to someone with the equivalent of a first course in operator K-theory. In particular, we do not assume prior knowledge of controlled K-theory, and use a new and concrete model for the Baum-Connes conjecture with coefficients that requires no bivariant K-theory to set up. 

In this paper, we introduce a property of topological dynamical systems that we call finite dynamical complexity. For systems with this property, one can in principle compute the K-theory of the associated crossed product C*-algebra by splitting it up into simpler pieces and using the methods of controlled K-theory. The main part of the paper illustrates this idea by giving a new proof of the Baum-Connes conjecture for actions with finite dynamical complexity. We have tried to keep the paper as self-contained as possible: we hope the main part will be accessible to someone with the equivalent of a first course in operator K-theory. In particular, we do not assume prior knowledge of controlled K-theory, and use a new and concrete model for the Baum-Connes conjecture with coefficients that requires no bivariant K-theory to set up. 

We provide a characterization of when a coarse equivalence between coarse disjoint unions of expander graphs is close to a bijective coarse equivalence. We use this to show that if the uniform Roe algebras over metric spaces that are coarse unions of expanders graphs are isomorphic, then the metric spaces must be bijectively coarsely equivalent. 

The universal coefficient theorem is a fundamental problem in the classification theory for C*-algebras. In this article we develop a quantitative K-homology theory to prove the universal coefficient theorem for C*-algebras with finite complexity. 

We study which von Neumann algebras can be embedded into uniform Roe algebras and quasi-local algebras associated with a uniformly locally finite metric space X. Under weak assumptions, these C*-algebras contain embedded copies of certain matrix algebras. We aim to show they cannot contain any other von Neumann algebras. One of our main results shows that the only embedded von Neumann algebras are the “obvious” ones. 

Complexity rank for C*-algebras was introduced by the second author and Yu for applications towards the UCT: very roughly, this rank is at most n if you can repeatedly cut the C∗-algebra in half at most n times, and end up with something finite-dimensional. In this paper, we study complexity rank, and also a weak complexity rank that we introduce; having weak complexity rank at most one can be thought of as “two-colored local finite-dimensionality”. We first show that, for separable, unital, and simple C*-algebras, weak complexity rank one is equivalent to the conjunction of nuclear dimension one and real rank zero. In particular, this shows that the UCT for all nuclear C*-algebras is equivalent to equality of the weak complexity rank and the complexity ranks for Kirchberg algebras with zero K-theory groups. However, we also show using a K-theoretic obstruction (torsion in K1) that weak complexity rank one and complexity rank one are not the same in general. We then use the Kirchberg–Phillips classification theorem to compute the complexity rank of all UCT Kirchberg algebras: it equals one when the K1-group is torsion-free, and equals two otherwise. 

We introduce a notion of approximate ideal structure for a C*-algebra, and use it as a tool to study K-theory groups. The notion is motivated by the classical Mayer-Vietoris sequence, by the theory of nuclear dimension as introduced by Winter and Zacharias, and by the theory of dynamical complexity introduced by Guentner, Yu, and the author. A major inspiration for our methods comes from recent work of Oyono-Oyono and Yu in the setting of controlled K-theory of filtered C*-algebras; we do not, however, use that language in this paper. We give two main applications. The first is a vanishing result for K-theory that is relevant to the Baum-Connes conjecture. The second is a permanence result for the Kunneth formula in C*-algebra K-theory: roughly, this says that if A can be decomposed into a pair of subalgebras (C,D) such that C, D, and C∩ D all satisfy the Kunneth formula, then A itself satisfies the Kunneth formula.