Braided tensor product of von Neumann algebras

Abstract

We introduce a definition of braided tensor product $\operatorname{M}\overline{\boxtimes}\operatorname{N}$ of von Neumann algebras equipped with an action of a quasi-triangular quantum group $\mathbb{G}$ (this includes the case when $\mathbb{G}$ is a Drinfeld double). It is a new von Neumann algebra which comes together with embeddings of $\operatorname{M},\operatorname{N}$ and the unique action of $\mathbb{G}$ for which embeddings are equivariant. More generally, we construct braided tensor product of von Neumann algebras equipped with actions of locally compact quantum groups linked by a bicharacter. We study several examples, in particular we show that crossed products can be realised as braided tensor products. We also show that one can take the braided tensor product $\vartheta_1\boxtimes\vartheta_2$ of normal, completely bounded maps which are equivariant, but this fails without the equivariance condition.