Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
In the duality for locally compact groups, much use is made of a version of the Hopf algebra technique in the context of von Neumann algebras, culminating in the theory of Kac algebras [6], [14]. It seems natural to ask whether something like a Hopf algebraic structure can be defined on the pre-dual of a Kac algebra. This leads to the question of whether the multiplication on a von Neumann algebra M, viewed as a linear map m from M ⊙ M (the algebraic tensor product) to M, can be pre-transposed to give a co-multiplication on the pre-dual M*, i.e., a linear map m* from M* to the completion of M* ⊙ M* with respect to some cross-norm. A related question is whether the multiplication on a C*-algebra A can be transposed to give a co-multiplication on the dual A*. Of course, this can be regarded as a special case of the preceding question by taking M = A**, where the double dual A** is identified with the enveloping von Neumann algebra of A.