Brown Measure and Iterates of the Aluthge Transform for Some Operators Arising from Measurable Actions∗

We consider the Aluthge transform T̃ = |T |1/2U |T |1/2 of a Hilbert space operator T , where T = U |T | is the polar decomposition of T . We prove that the map T 7→ T̃ is continuous with respect to the norm topology and with respect to the ∗–SOT topology on bounded sets. We consider the special case in a tracial von Neumann algebra when U implements an automorphism of the von Neumann algebra generated by the positive part |T | of T , and we prove that the iterated Aluthge transform converges to a normal operator whose Brown measure agrees with that of T (and we compute this Brown measure). This proof relies on a theorem that is an analogue of von Neumann’s mean ergodic theorem, but for sums weighted by binomial coefficients.