Appears in collection : Group operator algebras and Non commutative geometry / Algèbres d'opérateurs de groupes et Geometrie non commutative

In the world of von Neumann algebras, factors can be classified into three types. The type III factors are those that do not have a trace. They are related to nonsingular ergodic actions, regular representations of non-unimodular groups and quantum field theory. Some of the key structural properties of this class of factors are still not well understood. In this mini-course, I will give a gentle introduction to the theory of type III factors and to the deepest open problem in the theory : Connes's Bicentralizer Problem (1979).