Bornological quantum groups

Abstract

We introduce and study the concept of a bornological quantum group. This generalizes the theory of algebraic quantum groups in the sense of van Daele from the algebraic setting to the framework of bornological vector spaces. Working with bornological vector spaces, the scope of the latter theory can be extended considerably. In particular, the bornological theory covers smooth convolution algebras of arbitrary locally compact groups and their duals. Moreover Schwartz algebras of nilpotent Lie groups are bornological quantum groups in a natural way, and similarly one may consider algebras of functions on finitely generated discrete groups defined by various decay conditions. Another source of examples arises from deformation quantization in the sense of Rieffel. Apart from describing these examples we obtain some general results on bornological quantum groups. In particular, we construct the dual of a bornological quantum group and prove the Pontrjagin duality theorem.