On the cohomology of joins of operator algebras (Q2368770)

By analogy with the join in topology, the join \({\mathcal A}*{\mathcal B}\) for operator algebras \(\mathcal A\) and \(\mathcal B\) acting on Hilbert spaces \(\mathcal H\) and \(\mathcal K\), respectively, was defined by \textit{F. L. Gilfeather} and \textit{R. R. Smith} [Am. J. Math. 116, No. 3, 541--561 (1994; Zbl 0844.46044)]. Assuming that \(\mathcal K\) is finite-dimensional, they calculated the Hochschild cohomology groups for \({\mathcal A}*{\mathcal B}\) with coefficients in \({\mathcal L}({\mathcal K}\oplus{\mathcal H})\). We assume that \(\mathfrak A\) is a maximal abelian von Neumann algebra acting on \(\mathcal H\), \(\mathcal A\) is a subalgebra of \({\mathfrak A}\overline\otimes{\mathcal L}({\mathcal K})\), and \(\mathcal B\) is an ultraweakly closed subalgebra of \(M_n({\mathfrak A})\) containing \({\mathfrak A}\otimes 1_n\). We show that \(\mathcal B\) may be decomposed into a finite sum of free modules. In this context, we redefine the join of \(\mathcal A\) and \(\mathcal B\), generalize the calculations of Gilfeather and Smith, and calculate \(H^m({\mathcal A}*{\mathcal B},{\mathfrak A} \overline\otimes{\mathcal L}(\mathbb C^n\otimes{\mathcal K}))\) for all \(m\geq 0\).