Mathematicians Kuperberg (U. of California-Davis) and Weaver (Washington U., St. Louis, Missouri) propose a new definition of quantum metric spaces, or W*-metric spaces, in the setting of von Neumann algebras. Their definition effectively reduces to the classical notion in the atomic abelian case, has both concrete and intrinsic characterizations, and admits a wide variety of tractable examples. The goal is a mutual generalization of the standard models of classical and quantum error correction. Then Weaver goes on to define a quantum relation on a von Neumann algebra to be a weak* closed operator bimodule over its commutant. There is no index. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
