Recurrence and ergodicity in unital \({\ast}\)-algebras. (Q1417977)

The aim of the paper is to state and prove a noncommutative analogue of the following 1934 theorem by Khintchine: if \(T\) is a nonsingular mapping on a probability space \((X,\Sigma,\mu)\) with \(\mu(T^{-1}(S))\leq \mu(S)\) for all measurable \(S\), then for every \(A\in\Sigma\) and \(\varepsilon>0\) the set of natural \(k\) with \(\mu(A\cap T^{-k}(A))>\mu(A)^2-\varepsilon\) is relatively dense in the set of natural numbers. A noncommutative dynamical system as defined in this paper is a triple consisting of a unital \(\ast\)-algebra \(\mathfrak A\), equipped with a state \(\varphi\), and a linear transformation \(\tau\) of \(\mathfrak A\) with the property \(\varphi(\tau(A)^\ast\tau(A))\leq\varphi(A^\ast A)\) for all \(A\in{\mathfrak{A}}\). (In particular, the ergodicity of such a system is understood as follows: every sequence \(A_n\in {\mathfrak{A}}\) that is Cauchy with regard to the ``Hilbert-Schmidt'' seminorm \(\text{ norm}\cdot_{\varphi}\) associated to the trace \(\phi\), converges to a suitable scalar multiple of the unit in the above norm as soon as \(\text{ norm}{\tau(A_n)-A_n}_{\varphi}\to 0\).) The following general noncommutative version of Khintchine's theorem is established: for a noncommutative dynamical system as above, and any \(A\in {\mathfrak{A}}\) and an \(\varepsilon>0\), the set of all natural numbers \(k\) with \(|\varphi(A^\ast\tau^k(A))| > | \varphi(A)| ^2-\varepsilon\) is relatively dense. Specializations of this result to \(C^\ast\)-algebras and von Neumann algebras are discussed, and a number of examples is given.