QUANTUM 'ax + b' GROUP

'ax + b' is the group of affine transformations of the real line R. In quantum version ab = q²ba, where q² = e^{-i ℏ} is a number of modulus 1. The main problem of constructing quantum deformation of this group on the C*-level consists in non-selfadjointness of Δ(b) = a ⊗ b + b ⊗ I. This problem is overcome by introducing (in addition to a and b) a new generator β commuting with a and anticommuting with b. β (or more precisely β ⊗ β) is used to select a suitable selfadjoint extension of a ⊗ b + b ⊗ I. Furthermore we have to assume that , where k = 0,1,2, ·. In this case, q is a root of 1.

To construct the group, we write an explicit formula for the Kac–Takesaki operator W. It is shown that W is a manageable multiplicative unitary in the sense of [3,19]. Then using the general theory we construct a C*-algebra A and a comultiplication Δ ∈ Mor (A,A ⊗ A). A should be interpreted as the algebra of all continuous functions vanishing at infinity on quantum 'ax + b'-group. The group structure is encoded by Δ. The existence of coinverse also follows from the general theory [19].