Perturbations of subalgebras of type II\(_1\) factors (Q1883595)

Let \(\mathcal{B}_0\) and \(\mathcal{B}\) be von Neumann subalgebras of a type \({II}_1\) factor \(\mathcal{N}\). Given a map \(\phi\) on \(\mathcal{N}\), the authors define \(\| \phi\| _{\infty,2}=\sup\{\| \phi(x)\| _2 :\| x\| \leq 1\}\) and consider \(\| {\mathbb E}_{\mathcal{B}_0} - {\mathbb E}_\mathcal{B}\| _{\infty,2}\) as the distance between \(\mathcal{B}_0\) and \(\mathcal{B}\), where \({\mathbb E}_{\mathcal{B}_0}\) and \({\mathbb E}_\mathcal{B}\) are the associated trace preserving conditional expectations. Two subalgebras are close to one another if \(\| {\mathbb E}_{\mathcal{B}_0} - {\mathbb E}_\mathcal{B}\| _{\infty,2}\) is small. Under the hypothesis that the relative commutant in \(\mathcal{N}\) of each algebra is equal to its center, the authors prove that close subalgebras have large compressions which are spatially isomorphic by a partial isometry close to 1 in the \(\| \;\| _2\)-norm. This hypothesis is satisfied by maximal abelian subalgebras (masas) and subfactors of trivial relative commutant. As a consequence, they show that if \(\mathcal{A}\) is a masa and \(u \in \mathcal{N}\) is a unitary such that \(\mathcal{A}\) and \(u\mathcal{A}u^*\) are close, then \(u\) must be close to a unitary which normalizes \(\mathcal{A}\).