Rosenthal's theorem for subspaces of noncommutative \(L_p\) (Q2465258)

Rosenthal's well-known theorem says that a reflexive subspace of \(L_1\) embeds into \(L_p\) for some \(p>1\). The authors solve a long standing open problem of generalizing the result to noncommutative \(L_p\)-spaces. Namely, they show that there exists a positive density \(d\in L_1(N)\) with \(\text{tr}(d)=1\) and a mapping \(u:X\to L_p(N)\) such that \[ x=d^{1-1/p}u(x)+u(x)d^{1-1/p}. \] They also prove the following extended form of the theorem: Given a von Neumann algebra \(N\), a fixed \(1\leq q<2\), and a subspace \(X\) of \(L_q(N)\) not containing \(\ell_q\), one can find, for some index \(q<p<2\), a positive density \(d\in L_1(N)\) with \(\text{tr}(d)=1\) and a map \(u:X\to L_p(N)\) such that \[ x=d^{1/q-1/p}u(x)+u(x)d^{1/q-1/p}. \] Additionally, the following new inequality, for \(2<p<\infty\) and \(a,x\in L_p^+(N)\), is obtained: \[ \|a+x\|_p^p\leq \|a\|_p^p+p2^{p-1} \max\{\|a^{p-1}x\|_1,\|x\|_p^p\}. \] Let us fix a von Neumann algebra \(N\) and a faithful normal state \(\phi\) on \(N\) with density \(d\in L_1(N)\). One of the main obstacles to proving the theorems was a lack of appropriate interpolation theorems for intersections of left and right embeddings, needed for the duality arguments. To this aim, the complex interpolation method is applied to the couple consisting of an \(L^p(N)\) and the intersection \(\Delta_{p,q}(\phi)\) of the completions \(L^r_{p,q}(\phi)\) and \(L^c_{p,q}(\phi)\) of \(L^p(N)\) with respect to the norms \[ \|x\|_{L^r_{p,q}(\phi)}=\|d^{1/q-1/p}x\|_q \text{ and } \|x\|_{L^c_{p,q}(\phi)}=\|xd^{1/q-1/p}\|_q. \] It is shown that the interpolation scale consists of the spaces \(\Delta_{p,r}(\phi)\). The first step is to reduce the problem to the case of a finite von Neumann algebra and \(d, d^{-1}\) bounded, by applying the well known Haagerup construction (see, for example, \textit{U. Haagerup, M. Junge} and \textit{Q. Xu} [``Reduction for noncommutative \(L_p\)-spaces and applications'', \url{arXiv:0806.3635}]). Then the main tool are the spaces of lower and upper triangular matrices in \(L_p(M_n(N))\). The fact that they form interpolation scales provides a noncommutative analog of Peter Jones' theorem on interpolation of Hardy spaces; it was proved by Pisier, and the authors use a version of the result from \textit{G. Pisier} and \textit{Q. Xu} [in:\ Handbook of the geometry of Banach spaces, Vol.\,2 (Amsterdam:\ North--Holland), 1459--1517 (2003; Zbl 1046.46048), Theorem 4.5]. The techniques developed in this paper seem to provide a powerful tool for the future research on noncommutative \(L_p\)-spaces.