The affine group of a local field acts on the tree $𝕋\left(𝔉\right)$ (the Bruhat-Tits building of $\mathrm{GL}(2,𝔉)$) with a fixed point in the space of ends $\partial 𝕋\left(F\right)$. More generally, we define the affine group $Aff\left(𝔉\right)$ of any homogeneous tree $𝕋$ as the group of all automorphisms of $𝕋$ with a common fixed point in $\partial 𝕋$, and establish main asymptotic properties of random products in $Aff\left(𝔉\right)$: (1) law of large numbers and central limit theorem; (2) convergence to $\partial 𝕋$ and solvability of the Dirichlet problem at infinity; (3) identification of the Poisson boundary...

Let $\Gamma$ be a group and $r_n\left(\Gamma \right)$ the number of its $n$-dimensional irreducible complex representations. We define and study the associated representation zeta function ${𝒵}_{\Gamma }\left(s\right)={\sum }_{n=1}^{\infty }{r}_n\left(\Gamma \right)n^{-s}$. When $\Gamma$ is an arithmetic group satisfying the congruence subgroup property then ${𝒵}_{\Gamma }\left(s\right)$ has an “Euler factorization”. The “factor at infinity” is sometimes called the “Witten zeta function” counting the rational representations of an algebraic group. For these we determine precisely the abscissa of convergence. The local factor at a finite place...