## Category: dilation theory

### Dilations of q-commuting unitaries

Malte Gerhold and I just have just uploaded a revision of our paper “Dilations of q-commuting unitaries” to the arxiv. This paper has been recently accepted to appear in IMRN, and was previously rejected by CMP, so we have four anonymous referees and two handling editors to be thankful to for various corrections and suggested improvements (though, as you may understand, one editor and two referees have reached quite a wrong conclusion regarding our beautiful paper :-).

This is a quite short paper (200 full pages shorter than the paper I recently announced), which tells a simple and interesting story: we find that optimal constant $c_\theta$, such that every pair of unitaries $u,v$ satisfying the q-commutation relation

$vu = e^{i\theta} uv$

dilates to a pair of commuting normal operators with norm less than or equal to $c_\theta$ (this problems is related to the “complex matrix cube problem” that we considered in the summer project half year ago and the one before). We provide a full solution. There are a few ramifications of this idea, as well as surprising connections and applications, so I invite you to check out the nice little introduction.

### CP-Semigroups and Dilations, Subproduct Systems and Superproduct Systems: the Multi-Parameter Case and Beyond

Michael Skeide and I have recently uploaded our new paper to the arxiv: CP-Semigroups and Dilations, Subproduct Systems and Superproduct Systems: The Multi-Parameter Case and Beyond. In this gigantic (219 pages) paper, we propose a framework for studying the dilation theory of CP-semigroups parametrized by rather general monoids (i.e., semigroups with unit), and we use this framework for obtaining new results regarding the possibility or impossibility of constructing or having a dilation, we use it also for obtaining new structural results on the “mechanics” of dilations, and we analyze many examples using our tools. We present results that we have announced long ago, as well as some surprising discoveries.

This is an exciting moment for me, since we have been working on this project for more than a decade.

“Excuse me, did you really say decade?”

Read the rest of this entry »

### A survey (another one!) on dilation theory

I recently uploaded to the arxiv my new survey “Dilation theory: a guided tour“. I am pretty happy and proud of the result! Right now I feel like it is the best survey ever written (honest, that’s how I feel, I know that its an illusion), but experience tells me that two months from now I might be a little embarrassed (like: how could I be so vain to think that I could pull of a survey on this gigantic topic?).

(Well, these are the usual highs and lows of being a mathematician, but since this is a survey paper and not a research paper, I feel comfortable enough to share these feelings).

This survey was submitted (and will hopefully appear in) to the Proceedings of the International Workshop on Operator Theory and its Applications (IWOTA) 2019, Portugal. It is an expanded version of the semi-plenary talk that I gave in that conference. I used a preliminary version of this survey as lecture notes for the mini-course that I gave at the recent workshop “Noncommutative Geometry and its Applications” at NISER Bhubaneswar.

I hope somebody finds it useful or entertaining 🙂