The bicommutant theorem is a theorem within the field of functional analysis regarding certain topological properties
of function algebras. The theorem says that, given a
Hilbert space , a
-subalgebra
of
which acts nondegenerately
is dense in its bicommutant
under the so-called sigma-strong
operator topology. Here,
denotes the algebra of bounded
operators from
to itself.
The Bicommutant theorem is generally attributed to John von Neumann.
The theorem itself has a number of important corollaries, not the least among which is an equivalence by which one can classify a subalgebra of
as a von Neumann Algebra.