International Journal of Mathematics

We study the general theory of Frobenius algebras with group actions. These structures arise when one is studying the algebraic structures associated to a geometry stemming from a physical theory with a global finite gauge group, i.e. orbifold theories. In this context, we introduce and axiomatize these algebras. Furthermore, we define geometric cobordism categories whose functors to the category of vector spaces are parameterized by these algebras. The theory is also extended to the graded and super-graded cases. As an application, we consider Frobenius algebras having some additional properties making them more tractable. These properties are present in Frobenius algebras arising as quotients of Jacobian ideal, such as those having their origin in quasi-homogeneous singularities and their symmetries.

The notion of the amenability of a locally compact group has been extended in various ways. Two weaker versions of amenability, weak amenability and the approximation property, have been defined for locally compact groups (by Haagerup and Haagerup and Kraus, respectively) and Bekka has defined a notion of amenability for representations of locally compact groups. Correspondences can be viewed as a generalization of representations of such groups. Using this viewpoint, Ananthraman–Delaroche has defined a notion of (left) amenability for correspondences. In this paper, we define notions of weak amenability and the approximation property for correspondences (and representations of locally compact groups), and obtain various results concerning these notions. Ananthraman–Delaroche showed that if N ⊂ M is an inclusion of von Neumann algebras, and if the associated inclusion correspondence is left amenable, then various approximation properties of N (semidiscreteness, the weak* completely bounded approximation property, and the weak* operator approximation property) are shared by M. We show that if this correspondence has the (weaker) approximation property, then if N has the weak* operator approximation property, so does M. An application of this result to crossed products is also given.

For a convex, real function f, we present a simple proof of the formula