The Modular Symmetry of Markov Maps
Jon Bannon, Jan Cameron, Kunal Mukherjee

TL;DR
This paper extends the understanding of the modular symmetry properties of state-preserving maps on von Neumann algebras, showing that unital completely positive maps also exhibit a canonical modular structure.
Contribution
It generalizes known modular symmetry results from automorphisms to unital completely positive maps, revealing a broader modular framework.
Findings
Unital completely positive maps admit a canonical modular structure.
The modular symmetry extends beyond automorphisms to more general maps.
The results unify the treatment of automorphisms and completely positive maps in modular theory.
Abstract
A state-preserving automorphism of a von Neumann algebra induces a canonical unitary operator on the GNS Hilbert space of the state which fixes the vacuum. This unitary commutes with both the modular operator of the state and its modular conjugation. We prove an extension of this result for state-preserving unital completely positive maps.
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Taxonomy
TopicsAdvanced Operator Algebra Research · Random Matrices and Applications · Advanced Topics in Algebra
The Modular Symmetry of Markov Maps
Jon P. Bannon
Siena College Department of Mathematics, 515 Loudon Road, Loudonville, NY 12211, USA
,
Jan Cameron
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604, USA
and
Kunal Mukherjee
Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600 036, India
Abstract.
A state–preserving automorphism of a von Neumann algebra induces a canonical unitary operator on the GNS Hilbert space of the state which fixes the vacuum. This unitary commutes with both the modular operator of the state and its modular conjugation. We prove an extension of this result for state–preserving unital completely positive maps.
Key words and phrases:
von Neumann Algebras, Completely Positive Maps
1. Introduction
The starting point of this note is the classic paper of Haagerup [Ha] on standard forms, in which it was observed that any state-preserving automorphism of a von Neumann algebra can be extended to a unitary operator on the GNS Hilbert space of the state. It was proved there, by an elegant argument with the polar decomposition, that this unitary extension commutes with both the modular operator of the state and its associated modular conjugation. It is natural to ask whether these results can be generalized to the setting of state-preserving completely positive maps between von Neumann algebras; the main result of this paper answers this question affirmatively for an important class of such maps.
If and are von Neumann algebras with normal, faithful states and , a linear map is called a –Markov map if is unital, completely positive, and satisfies
[TABLE]
Any such map is automatically normal, and extends in a natural way to a Hilbert space operator which we call the -extension of . The main result of this note is that the -extension of any -Markov map between von Neumann algebras and satisfies an analogous property to the state-preserving automorphisms studied in [Ha]. In particular, we show that for any such , the map intertwines the anti-linear isometries associated to and , and – up to passing to the closure of a (necessarily) densely-defined operator – also intertwines the modular operators of and .
Markov maps between von Neumann algebras that connect a pair of states and intertwine their modular automorphism groups in this way have appeared recently in the von Neumann algebra literature in various contexts. Anantharaman-Delaroche [AD] used –Markov maps in proving a noncommutative version of an ergodic theorem of Nevo and Stein, and asked whether all such maps were “factorizable”. Haagerup and Musat later answered this question in the negative, on the way to their solution to the Asymptotic Quantum Birkhoff Conjecture [HaMu]. It has also been shown (cf. Theorem 4.1 of [CaSk]) that a version of the Haagerup Approximation Property for a von Neumann algebra with a fixed normal, faithful state can be formulated in terms of -Markov maps on .
The initial motivation for studying this problem arose in an attempt to develop a general theory of joinings of -dynamical systems (the initial steps of which will appear in the forthcoming paper [BCM]), i.e., –Markov maps as above that also intertwine actions of a group on the associated GNS Hilbert spaces. Many properties of classical measurable dynamical systems are defined relative to a given subsystem – for example, relative ergodicity and relative weak mixing, and relative independence of a pair of systems over a common subsystem – but formulation of their noncommutative analogues poses technical challenges. One issue that arises is the requirement of “modular symmetry” of the canonical –extension of a certain Markov map associated to the dynamical system. Indeed, the result mentioned above (Proposition 3.7 of [Ha]) on commutation of the -extension of a state-preserving automorphism with both the modular operator and modular conjugation plays a role in previous work on joinings of –dynamical systems (see, for instance, Construction 3.4 of [Du] and Lemma 2.4 of [Du2]). With a view toward further developments on joinings of -dynamical systems, we therefore aim to establish a modular symmetry result in the more general setting of the induced operator associated to a Markov map. Our main result is the following.
Theorem 1.1**.**
Let and be two –probability spaces, where are von Neumann algebras with separable preduals and , are faithful normal states on and , respectively. Let be a unital completely positive u.c.p. in the sequel map such that and for all , where denote the associated modular automorphisms. Denote by and the associated modular operators and by and the associated anti–linear isometries. Then,
[TABLE]
where is the –extension of .
Acknowledgements: Work on this paper was initiated during a visit of KM to Vassar College and Siena College in 2012, partially supported by Vassar’s Rogol Distinguished Visitor program. We thank the Rogol Fund for this support. JC’s research was partially supported by a research travel grant from the Simons Foundation, and by Simons Foundation Collaboration Grant for Mathematicians #319001. JB thanks Liming Ge and the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for their hospitality and support. KM thanks Serban Ştrǎtilǎ for helpful conversations. The authors thank Ken Dykema, David Kerr and Vern Paulsen, for their helpful feedback on this project.
2. Preliminaries
All von Neumann algebras in this paper have separable preduals. Let be a von Neumann algebra with a faithful, normal state . Denote by and the associated GNS Hilbert space and its canonical unit cyclic and separating vector, and let act on via left multiplication. We will denote the inner product and norm on by and , respectively.
We recall, without proof, the following facts that are needed in the sequel. The conjugate–linear map defined by for all is closable with closure having polar decomposition . In fact, the adjoint is the closure of the closable linear map on defined by for all , and the polar decomposition of is . The conjugate–linear map satisfies and for all , i.e. as a conjugate–linear map. Tomita’s modular operator is the positive, self–adjoint operator . The operator is invertible and satisfies , as well as and . Furthermore, and for all . By the fundamental theorem of Tomita and Takesaki, for all , and . Recall that for all defines the modular automorphism of associated to . For more detail we refer the reader to [St] and [Ta].
Let be a densely–defined positive self–adjoint nonsingular operator on a Hilbert space . Then and generate an abelian von Neumann algebra and is affiliated to . If and are complex–valued Borel measurable functions on such that on or equivalently on , then and these (possibly densely defined) operators are closed. For , let
[TABLE]
where is the principal branch of the logarithm on . Then for all . Thus, writing and using the functional calculus for unbounded operators Theorem 5.6.26 [KRI], one has . Let be the Borel function on defined as when and [math] when , it follows that is a strong–operator continuous one–parameter group of unitaries on . Note that the functions and agree on and thus
[TABLE]
Since is closed and injective, its inverse operator is closed and densely defined. Let denote . Then . Note that and are both affiliated to and both are inverses to in the algebra of all closed operators affiliated to . Thus,
[TABLE]
Again is positive, self–adjoint and nonsingular and for all . Thus, for all . While need not agree with for all , these do agree when is a real number. Thus for any ,
[TABLE]
so that and are all inverses of the operator .
Note that is affiliated to for all . Recall that if is closed and is bounded and everywhere defined on , then is closed. Thus, if and are Borel functions whose domains each contain and is bounded, then is densely defined and closed. Thus and for all and
[TABLE]
As is affiliated to and is a unitary in this abelian algebra,
[TABLE]
for all and .
Let denote the graph of an operator, and let . Then it is a standard fact of the Tomita–Takesaki theory that if and only if the function defined on the imaginary axis has a continuous extension to the strip which is analytic in its interior and , where if and if . By convention and thus c.f. Lemma , [Ta]. We will use the above facts with replaced by the modular operators and in the statement of Theorem 1.1. In what follows, if with , we will denote by .
3. Main Results
As above, let and be von Neumann algebras equipped with faithful, normal states and , respectively. Let be a u.c.p. map such that . Then is automatically normal by a classic result of Tomiyama [To]. Define by for all . Thus, is, a priori, an unbounded operator. However, by Kadison’s inequality we have
[TABLE]
Thus, extends to a bounded operator from to of norm , as . Moreover, if for all , then by a result of Accardi–Cecchini [AC] there exists a normal u.c.p. map satisfying
[TABLE]
for all and . It follows that . Furthermore, for all
[TABLE]
Let be the set
[TABLE]
The next intermediary result is natural and encodes a lot of information, but its proof is tedious. We provide a detailed proof since we cannot find one in the literature.
Theorem 3.1**.**
Let and be von Neumann algebras equipped with faithful normal states and respectively. Let . Then
[TABLE]
is a core for and
[TABLE]
We remark that the containment is easy to verify but the equality as stated above requires argument.
Proof.
Step 1: In this step, we justify that it is enough to prove the assertions when is real. Let . Then, as discussed above, , where . Assume that is closable, and is a common core of and .
Note that is closed. Also note that . It follows that is to be densely defined and so . Since is closable, is densely defined, which forces to be densely defined, and consequently, is closable. Clearly . For the other inclusion, let . Then , and since is a core for there exists such that and . Since keeps invariant, and ; thus . It follows that . Consequently, by Eq. (2), we have
[TABLE]
and is a core for . Thus, it is sufficient to prove the assertions when .
Step 2: Let . We claim that .
Let . Then . Let be a continuous function such that is analytic in , for all and . Then by the uniqueness of analytic continuation and Eq. (2) it follows that is continuous, analytic in and . Hence and . This shows that . Consequently, as is closed it follows that is closable and .
Step 3: We now proceed to find a common subspace on which and both agree. By the previous discussion, resp. , is a strongly continuous unitary group with infinitesimal self–adjoint generator Hamiltonian resp. . Note that , for all . Also, if , then the operator keeps invariant. Indeed, for , the map
[TABLE]
defines a bounded, sesquilinear form yielding a bounded operator on . A simple calculation shows that commutes with for each , and thus by Tomita’s theorem . Consequently, . It follows that as defined in the statement of the theorem is a core for , for any , and in particular is a core for [Ta] pp. 121–122. Working analogously with , one finds that which is defined similarly to is a common core for for all , and in particular is a core for . We claim that
[TABLE]
Indeed, if and is such that is entire and for all , then is entire and for all . Thus, and . This establishes Eq. (3).
Step 4: We now claim that is a core for . To see this, first note that and the latter is closed. Consider any such that . Then for all , one has
[TABLE]
Since is a core of ,
[TABLE]
Hence , since is self–adjoint and positive. Therefore,
[TABLE]
Since is dense, so . Thus, . As are self–adjoint and positive it follows that,
[TABLE]
Let , be the spectral resolution of in . Then, . From Eq. (5) it follows that , where is the elementary spectral measure of associated to the vector . So is [math] almost everywhere with respect to , which is impossible unless , as is nonsingular. So by Eq. (4) it follows that for all , i.e. . This shows that is indeed a core for .
Step 5: In the final step, we proceed to show that is a core for as well. Note that since is bounded, it follows that , where is defined in Eq. (1). Reversing the roles of and and arguing just as above it follows that is closed with core . It follows that . Consequently is closed.
We intend to show that is a core for . Once this is established, from Eq. (3) it follows that .
Let and . Since and is self–adjoint,
[TABLE]
as . It follows that , i.e. .
Suppose there exists such that for all ,
[TABLE]
Then, is orthogonal to and because is a core for the closed operator , by Eq. (6) we obtain
[TABLE]
It follows that as and
[TABLE]
Because is dense, it follows that . Thus, . It follows that , which forces . This Hahn–Banach separation argument shows that is a core for , and the proof is complete. ∎
Remark 3.2**.**
It is not possible to obtain that in general in Theorem 3.1. To see this, note that if , then is an everywhere defined bounded operator, while is only densely defined.**
Theorem 3.3**.**
Let . Then
[TABLE]
Proof.
From Theorem 3.1 we have for all . Thus, . But is densely defined. To see this, note that if where is defined in the statement of Theorem 3.1, then where is defined before Eq. (3). By Theorem 3.1 it follows that . Thus , since . So . It follows that
[TABLE]
When , we have . But then
[TABLE]
Since is a core for , the operator is densely defined and consequently
[TABLE]
Again, since on , we obtain . But , and so . Finally, because and are bounded we have equality, i.e., . ∎
The reference list from the paper itself. Each links out to its DOI / PubMed record.
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