Ranks of operators in simple C*-algebras

Let A be a unital simple separable C*-algebra with strict comparison of positive elements. We prove that the Cuntz semigroup of A is recovered functorially from the Murray-von Neumann semigroup and the tracial state space T(A) whenever the extreme boundary of T(A) is compact and of finite covering dimension. Combined with a result of Winter, we obtain Z \otimes A isomorphic to A whenever A moreover has locally finite decomposition rank. As a corollary, we confirm Elliott's classification conjecture under reasonably general hypotheses which, notably, do not require any inductive limit structure. These results all stem from our investigation of a basic question: what are the possible ranks of operators in a unital simple C*-algebra?Comment: 19 pages, no figure

On the Cartan map for crossed products and Hopf-Galois extensions

We study certain aspects of the algebraic K-theory of Hopf-Galois extensions. We show that the Cartan map from K-theory to G-theory of such an extension is a rational isomorphism, provided the ring of coinvariants is regular, the Hopf algebra is finite dimensional and its Cartan map is injective in degree zero. This covers the case of a crossed product of a regular ring with a finite group and has an application to the study of Iwasawa modules