Tensor products of subspace lattices and rank one density (Q2249210)

This interesting and readable paper advances our understanding of the so-called Lattice Tensor Product Formula, which is really a question or problem related to reflexivity of lattices of projections on a Hilbert space. Given a (complex) Hilbert space \({\mathcal H}\) and a lattice \({\mathcal L}\) of orthogonal projections onto subspaces of \({\mathcal H}\), we denote by \(\text{Alg}{\mathcal L}\) the algebra of all bounded linear operators \(A\) on \({\mathcal H}\) for which \(PAP=AP\) for all \(P\in{\mathcal L}\). For a (unital) algebra \({\mathcal A}\) of operators acting on \({\mathcal H}\), \(\text{Lat}{\mathcal A}\) is the subspace lattice containing all projections \(P\) for which \(PAP=AP\) for all \(A\in{\mathcal A}\). The lattice \({\mathcal L}\) is \textit{reflexive} if \(\text{LatAlg}{\mathcal L}={\mathcal L}\), while the operator algebra \({\mathcal A}\) is reflexive if \(\text{AlgLat}{\mathcal A}={\mathcal A}\). More generally, for subspace lattices \({\mathcal L}_1\) and \({\mathcal L}_2\) of the Hilbert spaces \({\mathcal H}_1\) and \({\mathcal H}_2\), respectively, let \({\mathcal L}_1\otimes {\mathcal L}_2\) denote the subspace lattice generated by projections of the form \(L_1\otimes L_2\) acting on the space \({\mathcal H}_1\otimes {\mathcal H}_2\). Similarly, when \({\mathcal A}_1\) and \({\mathcal A}_2\) are algebras of operators acting on \({\mathcal H}_1\) and \({\mathcal H}_2\), then \({\mathcal A}_1\otimes {\mathcal A}_2\) denotes the weak*-closed algebra of operators on \({\mathcal H}_1\otimes {\mathcal H}_2\) generated by the elementary tensors \(A_1\otimes A_2\). The Lattice Tensor Product Formula (LTPF) holds if \(\text{Lat}({\mathcal A}_1\otimes {\mathcal A}_2)=\text{Lat}({\mathcal A}_1)\otimes \text{Lat}({\mathcal A}_2)\), and the problem is really to figure out for which operator algebras this formula is valid. The LTPF is known to hold when at least one of \({\mathcal A}_1\) and \({\mathcal A}_2\) is a completely distributive CSL algebra; when both \({\mathcal A}_1\) and \({\mathcal A}_2\) are CSL algebras; or when \({\mathcal A}_1\) and \({\mathcal A}_2\) are von Neumann algebras one of which is injective. The paper under review adds two more scenarios under which the LTPF holds. Firstly (see Theorem 3.3), suppose that \({\mathcal L}_1\) is a subspace lattice such that the ideal generated by the rank-one elements of \({\mathcal A}_1=\text{Alg}{\mathcal L}_1\) is weak*-dense in \({\mathcal A}_1\) and take \({\mathcal L}_2\) to be the full subspace lattice of all projections on \({\mathcal H}_2\) (so that \(\text{Alg}{\mathcal L}_2={\mathbb C}I\)). Then \(\text{Lat}({\mathcal A}_1\otimes {\mathbb C}I)=\text{Lat}({\mathcal A}_1)\otimes {\mathcal L}_2\). Theorem 3.4 extends this result to the case where \({\mathcal L}_2\) is any CSL. Secondly, the authors focus on the case where one of the lattices is an atomic Boolean subspace lattice (ABSL); that is, suppose that \({\mathcal L}_1\) is a distributive and complemented lattice such that every projection \(L\) in \({\mathcal L}_1\) is the supremum of some collection of minimal projections, or \textit{atoms}, in \({\mathcal L}_1\). Corollary 5.3 establishes that, if \({\mathcal L}_1\) is an ABSL with the rank-one density property mentioned above, and \({\mathcal L}_2\) is any reflexive subspace lattice, then the Lattice Tensor Product Formula holds for \({\mathcal A}_1=\text{Alg}{\mathcal L}_1\) and \({\mathcal A}_2=\text{Alg}{\mathcal L}_2\). Much of the build-up to these main results consists in coming up with descriptions for the tensor product of two subspace lattices and determining when such a tensor product might be reflexive.