A coassociativeC *-quantum group with nonintegral dimensions

By weakening the counit and antipode axioms of aC ^*-Hopf algebra and allowing for the coassociative coproduct to be nonunital, we obtain a quantum group, that we call aweak C ^*-Hopf algebra, which is sufficiently general to describe the symmetries of essentially arbitrary fusion rules. This amounts to generalizing the Baaj-Skandalis multiplicative unitaries to multipicative partial isometries. Every finite-dimensional weakC ^*-Hopf algebra has a dual which is again a weakC ^*-Hopf algebra. An explicit example is presented with Lee-Yang fusion rules. We briefly discuss applications to amalgamated crossed products, doubles, and quantum chains.Supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund, OTKA T 016 233.Supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund, OTKA-1815.