Reflection positive one-parameter groups and dilations (Q2350329)

This article develops the theory of reflection positive one-parameter groups and the dual theory of dilations of contractive hermitian semigroups. The aim of this is to understand reflection positivity for general symmetric Lie groups and their representations. One of the central methods is an \(L^2\) realization of reflection positive one-parameter semigroups which is in some sense dual to the outgoing realization of one-parameter semigroups of isometries due to Lax and Phillips. Applications of the paper include the \(ax+b\) group, the Heisenberg group, the Euclidean motion group and the Euclidean conformal group. The paper contains a number of appendices in which the authors collect and give full proofs of some technical results some of which can be found in a concealed way (mostly without full proofs) in the literature.