Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Let $\alpha :\,G\,\curvearrowright \,M$ be a spatial action of a countable abelian group on a “spatial” von Neumann algebra $M$ and let $S$ be its unital subsemigroup with $G\,=\,{{S}^{-1}}S$. We explicitly compute the essential commutant and the essential fixed-points, modulo the Schatten $p$-class or the compact operators, of the ${{w}^{*}}$-semicrossed product of $M$ by $S$ when ${{M}^{'}}$ contains no non-zero compact operators. We also prove a weaker result when $M$ is a von Neumann algebra on a finite dimensional Hilbert space and $\left( G,\,S \right)\,=\,\left( \mathbb{Z},\,{{\mathbb{Z}}_{+}} \right)$, which extends a famous result due to Davidson (1977) for the classical analytic Toeplitz operators.