A von Neumann algebra approach to quantum metrics

We propose a new definition of quantum metric spaces, or W*-metric spaces, in the setting of von Neumann algebras. Our definition effectively reduces to the classical notion in the atomic abelian case, has both concrete and intrinsic characterizations, and admits a wide variety of tractable examples. A natural application and motivation of our theory is a mutual generalization of the standard models of classical and quantum error correction.