On the Haagerup and Kazhdan properties of R. Thompson's groups

A machine developed by the second author produces a rich family of unitary representations of the Thompson groups F,T and V. We use it to give direct proofs of two previously known results. First, we exhibit a unitary representation of V that has an almost invariant vector but no nonzero [F,F]-invariant vectors reproving, at least for T, Reznikov’s result that any intermediate subgroup between the commutator subgroup of F and V does not have Kazhdan’s property (T). Second, we construct a one parameter family interpolating between the trivial and the left regular representations of V. We exhibit a net of coefficients for those representations which vanish at infinity on T and converge to 1 thus reproving Farley’s result that T has the Haagerup property.