Operator space structure and amenability for Figà-Talamanca-Herz algebras

Column and row operator spaces—which we denote by COL and ROW, respectively—over arbitrary Banach spaces were introduced by the first-named author; for Hilbert spaces, these definitions coincide with the usual ones. Given a locally compact group G and p,p′∈(1,∞) with , we use the operator space structure on to equip the Figà-Talamanca-Herz algebra A_p(G) with an operator space structure, turning it into a quantized Banach algebra. Moreover, we show that, for p?q?2 or 2?q?p and amenable G, the canonical inclusion A_q(G)⊂A_p(G) is completely bounded (with cb-norm at most , where is Grothendieck's constant). As an application, we show that G is amenable if and only if A_p(G) is operator amenable for all—and equivalently for one—p∈(1,∞); this extends a theorem by Ruan.