Samuel Kim, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo
“Examples I.”
In this lecture we will focus on some nice kinds of examples of von Neumann algebras and their commutants (which are also von Neumann algebras). In particular, we will see that our basic examples give rise to five distinct kinds of von Neumann algebras which are given by what their commutants look like and whether or not they admit a trace. Lots of hard calculations and explicit representations will be given to generate intuition and provide models for us to have in mind as we progress in deeper into the theory.
MC 5417