On the similarity problem for locally compact quantum groups

Abstract: A well-known theorem of Day and Dixmier states that any uniformly bounded representation of an amenable locally compact group $G$ on a Hilbert space is similar to a unitary representation. Within the category of locally compact quantum groups, the conjectural analogue of the Day-Dixmier theorem is that every completely bounded Hilbert space representation of the convolution algebra of an amenable locally compact quantum group should be similar to a $\ast$-representation. We prove that this conjecture is false for a large class of non-Kac type compact quantum groups, including all $q$-deformations of compact simply connected semisimple Lie groups. On the other hand, within the Kac framework, we prove that the Day-Dixmier theorem does indeed hold for several new classes of examples, including amenable discrete quantum groups of Kac-type.