Morita equivalence for crossed products by Hilbert -bimodules

We introduce the notion of the crossed product of a -algebra by a Hilbert -bimodule . It is shown that given a -algebra which carries a semi-saturated action of the circle group (in the sense that is generated by the spectral subspaces and ), then is isomorphic to the crossed product . We then present our main result, in which we show that the crossed products and are strongly Morita equivalent to each other, provided that and are strongly Morita equivalent under an imprimitivity bimodule satisfying as Hilbert -bimodules. We also present a six-term exact sequence for -groups of crossed products by Hilbert -bimodules.