Continuous spatial semigroups of completely positive maps of \(\mathfrak B(H)\) (Q1419675)

The author himself initated the investigation of \(E_0\)-semigroups, that is, strongly continuous semigroups of unital normal endomorphisms, of \(B(H)\). In the sequel, the first steps in the classification of \(E_0\)-semigroups have been carried out by himself and by Arveson, who relates the study of \(E_0\)-semigroups on \(B(H)\) (up to cocycle conjugacy) to the study of product systems of Hilbert spaces [cf. \textit{W.\ Arveson}, Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 409 (1989; Zbl 0697.46035)]. An \(E_0\)-semigroup is spatial if it admits an intertwining semigroup of isometries. It is easy to write down examples that have such intertwining isometries and are, in a sense, generated by them (CCR-flows and everything that is cocycle conjugate to them exhausts this class, the so-called type I). It is difficult to write down both examples that are spatial but not cocycle conjugate to CCR-flows (type II) and examples that are nonspatial (type III). It was the author providing us with the first examples of both. Recently, Tsirelson came up with new classes of examples: [\textit{B. Tsirelson}, From random sets to continuous tensor products: answers to three questions of W. Arveson, Preprint, ArXiv: math.FA/0001070] for the spatial case and [\textit{B. Tsirelson}, From slightly coloured noises to unitless product systems, Preprint, ArXiv: math.FA/0006165] for the nonspatial case. These new classes of examples stimulated immediately systematic analyses in [\textit{V. Liebscher}, Random sets and invariants for (type II) continuous product systems of Hilbert spaces, Preprint, ArXiv: math.PR/0306365] and [\textit{B.V.R. Bhat} and \textit{R. Srinivasan}, On product systems arising from sum systems, Preprint, ArXiv: math.OA/0405276]. In the present article, the author presents a completely new idea how to obtain spatial \(E_0\)-semigroups from what he calls CP-flows. A CP-flow is a (contractive and sufficiently continuous) CP-semigroup \(B(H)\) where \(H=K\otimes L^2(0,\infty)\) and \(K\) is a (separable) Hilbert space such that the natural right shift intertwines the CP-semigroup with the identity id\(_{B(H)}\) on \(B(H)\). To begin with, the author shows that every spatial \(E_0\)-semigroup is cocycle conjugate to an \(E_0\)-semigroup that is also a CP-flow. This shows that a classification of CP-flows will include, in particular, a classification of spatial \(E_0\)-semigroups up to cocycle conjugacy. Then he starts analysing how CP-flows could be classified. It turns out that CP-flows are determined by their associated (generalized) boundary representations. A crucial role is played by the results in \textit{B.V.R.\ Bhat} [Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 709 (2001; Zbl 0976.46050)] where the order structure of subordinate CP-semigroups and their minimal (weakly) dilating \(E_0\)-semigroup is investigated. The author promises to give a huge number of examples and an exhaustive analysis of the case \(K={\mathbb C}\) in forthcoming papers.