Hilbert C*-module
Hilbert C*-modules are mathematical objects which generalise the notion of a Hilbert space (which itself is a generalisation of Euclidean space), in that they endow a linear space with an "inner product" which takes values in a C*-algebra. Hilbert C*-modules were first introduced in the work of Irving Kaplansky in 1953, which developed the theory for commutative, unital algebras (though Kaplansky observed that the assumption of a unit element was not "vital"). In the 1970s the theory was extended to non-commutative C*-algebras independently by William Lindall Paschke and Marc Rieffel, the latter in a paper which used Hilbert C*-modules to construct a theory of induced representations of C*-algebras. Hilbert C*-modules are crucial to Kasparov's formulation of KK-theory, and provide the right framework to extend the notion of Morita equivalence to C*-algebras. They can be viewed as the generalization of vector bundles to noncommutative C*-algebras and as such play an important role in noncommutative geometry, notably in C*-algebraic quantum group theory, and groupoid C*-algebras.
Spectrum (functional analysis)
For example, consider the Hilbert space formula_24, that consists of all bi-infinite sequences of real numbers
that have a finite sum of squares formula_26. The bilateral shift operator formula_2 simply displaces every element of the sequence by one position; namely if formula_28 then formula_29 for every integer formula_30. The eigenvalue equation formula_31 has no solution in this space, since it implies that all the values formula_32 have the same absolute value (if formula_33) or are a geometric progression (if formula_34); either way, the sum of their squares would not be finite. However, the operator formula_20 is not invertible if formula_36. For example, the sequence formula_37 such that formula_38 is in formula_24; but there is no sequence formula_40 in formula_24 such that formula_42 (that is, formula_43 for all formula_30).