The one percent property for free groups

Kesten's theorem characterises amenability in terms of spectral radii: a symmetric random walk on a group G has spectral radius 1 if and only if it generates an amenable subgroup.

We prove a quantitative "1%" version of this result for G a free group, or a fully residually free group: for every ε > 0, there is δ > 0 such that for every probability measure μ on G with convolution operator norm at least ε, there is a co-set of an amenable subgroup of G of mass > δ under μ.

This answers a question of Emmanuel Breuillard. We believe the same result to hold in a broader setting of linear groups, with δ depending on the dimension. The proof uses uniform exactness and a generalisation of the Tits alternative.

Joint work with Emmanuel Breuillard.