A note on commutators in algebras of unbounded operators (Q2196497)

The authors discuss the question of expressing an operator in an algebra of Hilbert space operators as a sum of commutators. They first note how the subject of commutators is related to derivations and describe the historical developements in the study of commutators. They then provide a survey of a number of important commutator results for special classes of operators. In the main new result here, they prove that, if \(\mathcal{R}\) denotes a von Neumann algebra of type \(\mathrm{II}_1\) and \(\mathscr{A}_f(\mathcal{R})\) is the algebra of all the (not necessarily bounded) operators affiliated with \(\mathcal{R}\), then the identity operator \(I\) in \(\mathcal{R}\) is the sum of two commutators in \(\mathscr{A}_f(\mathcal{R})\). This result leads to a negative answer to a conjecture made by the first two authors in [SIGMA, Symmetry Integrability Geom. Methods Appl. 10, Paper 009, 40 p. (2014; Zbl 1410.81008)] because it shows that there is a noncommutative polynomial in several variables with the property that whenever the variables are replaced by operators in \(\mathcal{R}\) the resulting operator has trace \(0\) but, replacing the variables with operators in \(\mathscr{A}_f(\mathcal{R})\), may yield a bounded operator with nonzero trace.