Dynamical Systems and Commutants in Crossed Products

In this paper, we describe the commutant of an arbitrary subalgebra A of the algebra of functions on a set X in a crossed product of A with the integers, where the latter act on A by a composition automorphism defined via a bijection of X. The resulting conditions which are necessary and sufficient for A to be maximal abelian in the crossed product are subsequently applied to situations where these conditions can be shown to be equivalent to a condition in topological dynamics. As a further step, using the Gelfand transform, we obtain for a commutative completely regular semi-simple Banach algebra a topological dynamical condition on its character space which is equivalent to the algebra being maximal abelian in a crossed product with the integers.