On orthogonal systems of matrix algebras (Q977467)

The author studies the decomposition of \(M_{n^2} (\mathbb C)\). He shows that there are no orthogonal decompositions of \(M_n (\mathbb C) \otimes M_{n^2} (\mathbb C)\equiv M_{n^2} (\mathbb C)\) into maximal abelian subalgebras and factors isomorphic to \(M_n (\mathbb C)\) in which the number of factors would be 1 and 3. The quantity \(c (\mathcal A,\mathcal B)\) measures how close the subalgebras \(\mathcal A,\mathcal B\subset M_n (\mathbb C)\) are to being orthogonal. It is shown that if \(\mathcal A' ,\mathcal B'\) are commutants of \(\mathcal A,\mathcal B\) then \(c (\mathcal A',\mathcal B')\) can be measures in terms of \(c (\mathcal A,\mathcal B)\) and the dimension of \(\mathcal A,\mathcal B\). The authors have also made some useful observations on recent result of \textit{D. Petz} and \textit{H. Ohno} [Acta Math. Hung. 124, No. 1-2, 165--177 (2009; Zbl 1265.15042)] which ensured that if \(\mathcal A,\mathcal B\subset M_n (\mathbb C)\) is an orthogonal pair of subalgebras and \(\dim(\mathcal A) \dim(\mathcal B) = n^2\), then \(\mathcal A',\mathcal B'\) is also a orthogonal pair.