KMS states on the crossed product -algebra of a homeomorphism

Abstract

Abstract Let $\phi :X\to X$ be a homeomorphism of a compact metric space X. For any continuous function $F:X\to \mathbb {R}$ there is a one-parameter group $\alpha ^{F}$ of automorphisms (or a flow) on the crossed product $C^*$ -algebra $C(X)\rtimes _{\phi }\mathbb {Z}$ defined such that $\alpha ^{F}_{t}(fU)=fUe^{-itF}$ when $f \in C(X)$ and U is the canonical unitary in the construction of the crossed product. In this paper we study the Kubo--Martin--Schwinger (KMS) states for these flows by developing an intimate relation to the ergodic theory of non-singular transformations and show that the structure of KMS states can be very rich and complicated. Our results are complete concerning the set of possible inverse temperatures; in particular, we show that when $C(X) \rtimes _{\phi } \mathbb Z$ is simple this set is either $\{0\}$ or the whole line $\mathbb R$ .