It is shown that simplicity of the crossed product of a unital AH-algebra with slow dimension growth by an endomorphism implies that the algebra is also purely infinite, provided only that the endomorphism leaves no trace state invariant and takes the unit to a full projection.

The Jiang--Su algebra $\mathcal{Z}$ has come to prominence in the classification program for nuclear $C^*$-algebras of late, due primarily to the fact that Elliott's classification conjecture in its strongest form predicts that all simple, separable, and nuclear $C^*$-algebras with unperforated $\mathrm{K}$-theory will absorb $\mathcal{Z}$ tensorially, i.e., will be $\mathcal{Z}$-stable. There exist counterexamples which suggest that the conjecture will only hold for simple, nuclear, separable and $\mathcal{Z}$-stable $C^*$-algebras. We prove that virtually all classes of nuclear $C^*$-algebras for which the Elliott conjecture has been confirmed so far consist of $\mathcal{Z}$-stable $C^*$-algebras. This follows in large part from the following result, also proved herein: separable and approximately divisible $C^*$-algebras are $\mathcal{Z}$-stable.

Let $A$ be a separable amenable purely infinite simple \CA which satisfies the Universal Coefficient Theorem. We prove that $A$ is weakly semiprojective if and only if $K_i(A)$ is a countable direct sum of finitely generated groups ($i=0,1$). Therefore, if $A$ is such a \CA, for any $\ep>0$ and any finite subset ${\mathcal F}\subset A$ there exist $\dt>0$ and a finite subset ${\mathcal G}\subset A$ satisfying the following: for any contractive positive linear map $L: A\to B$ (for any \CA $B$) with $ \|L(ab)-L(a)L(b)\|<\dt$ for $a, b\in {\mathcal G}$ there exists a homomorphism $h\from A\to B$ such that $ \|h(a)-L(a)\|<\ep$ for $a\in {\mathcal F}$.

We produce a complete description of the lattice of gauge-invariant ideals in $C^*(\Lambda)$ for a finitely aligned $k$-graph $\Lambda$. We provide a condition on $\Lambda$ under which every ideal is gauge-invariant. We give conditions on $\Lambda$ under which $C^*(\Lambda)$ satisfies the hypotheses of the Kirchberg--Phillips classification theorem.

Let $A$ be an amenable separable $C^*$-algebra and $B$ be a non-unital but $\sigma$-unital simple $C^*$-algebra with continuous scale. We show that two essential extensions $\tau_1$ and $\tau_2$ of $A$ by $B$ are approximately unitarily equivalent if and only if $$ [\tau_1]=[\tau_2] \text{ in } KL(A, M(B)/B). $$ If $A$ is assumed to satisfy the Universal Coefficient Theorem, there is a bijection from approximate unitary equivalence classes of the above mentioned extensions to $KL(A, M(B)/B)$. Using $KL(A, M(B)/B)$, we compute exactly when an essential extension is quasidiagonal. We show that quasidiagonal extensions may not be approximately trivial. We also study the approximately trivial extensions.

Let $\Gamma$ be a torsion free lattice in $G=\PGL(3, \mathbb{F})$ where $\mathbb{F}$ is a nonarchimedean local field. Then $\Gamma$ acts freely on the affine Bruhat-Tits building $\mathcal{B}$ of $G$ and there is an induced action on the boundary $\Omega$ of $\mathcal{B}$. The crossed product $C^*$-algebra $\mathcal{A}(\Gamma)=C(\Omega) \rtimes \Gamma$ depends only on $\Gamma$ and is classified by its $K$-theory. This article shows how to compute the $K$-theory of $\mathcal{A}(\Gamma)$ and of the larger class of rank two Cuntz-Krieger algebras.