Unitary conjugacy for type III subfactors and \(W^\ast\)-superrigidity (Q2124240)

The present article establishes a new criterion for intertwining by bimodules à la Popa in the setting of type III factors. Its main result in this direction, which is contained in Theorem A and Corollary B, states that for arbitrary inclusions of \(\sigma\)-finite von Neumann algebras \(A, B \subset M\) with conditional expectations \(\mathrm{E}_A \colon 1_A M 1_A \to A\) and \(\mathrm{E}_B \colon 1_B M 1_B \to B\), respectively, intertwining \(A \preceq_M B\) is equivalent to intertwining of continuous cores in the following sense. If \((N, \omega)\) is any fixed type III\(_1\) factor with a faithful normal state, both independent of \(A\), \(B\) and \(M\), and \(\varphi, \psi \in M_*\) are faithful normal states preserved by \(\mathrm{E}_B\) and \(\mathrm{E}_A\), respectively, then intertwining of \(A\) into \(B\) inside \(M\) is equivalent to the condition \begin{gather*} \Pi(\mathrm{C}_{\psi \otimes \omega}(A \overline{\otimes} N)) \preceq_{\mathrm{C}_{\varphi \otimes \omega}(M \overline{\otimes} N)} \mathrm{C}_{\varphi \otimes \omega}(B \overline{\otimes} N) \text{.} \end{gather*} This result allows the author to employ known characterisations of intertwining in the setup of type II von Neumann algebras. In this way, he achieves a \(W^\ast\)-superrigidity result for crossed products associated with Bernoulli shifts whose base is an amenable III\(_1\) factor among all crossed product von Neumann algebras arising from state-preserving, outer actions of discrete groups on amenable factors. Further, a stable strong solidity result for arbitrary free product von Neumann algebras is obtained.