Noncommutative Dynamics and E-Semigroups

These days, the term Noncommutative Dynamics has several interpretations. It is used in this book to refer to a set of phenomena associated with the dynamical evo­ lution of quantum systems of the simplest kind that involve rigorous mathematical structures associated with infinitely many degrees of freedom. The dynamics of such a system is represented by a one-parameter group of automorphisms of a non­ commutative algebra of observables, and we focus primarily on the most concrete case in which that algebra consists of all bounded operators on a Hilbert space. If one introduces a natural causal structure into such a dynamical system, then a pair of one-parameter semigroups of endomorphisms emerges, and it is useful to think of this pair as representing the past and future with respect to the given causality. These are both Eo-semigroups, and to a great extent the problem of understanding such causal dynamical systems reduces to the problem of under­ standing Eo-semigroups. The nature of these connections is discussed at length in Chapter 1. The rest of the book elaborates on what the author sees as the impor­ tant aspects of what has been learned about Eo-semigroups during the past fifteen years. Parts of the subject have evolved into a satisfactory theory with effective toolsj other parts remain quite mysterious. Like von Neumann algebras, Eo-semigroups divide naturally into three types: 1,11,111.