The principal results in this paper are concerned with the description of domains of infinitesimal generators of strongly continuous groups of isometries in non-commutative operator spaces $E(\mathcal{M},\tau)$, which are induced by $\mathbb{R}$-flows on $\mathcal{M}$. In particular, we are concerned with the description of operator functions which leave the domain of such generators invariant in all symmetric operator spaces, associated with a semi-finite von Neumann algebra $\mathcal{M}$ and a separable function space $E$ on $(0,\infty)$. Furthermore, we apply our results to the study of operator functions for which $[D,x]\in E(\mathcal{M},\tau)$ implies that $[D,f(x)]\in E(\mathcal{M},\tau)$, where $D$ is an unbounded self-adjoint operator. Our methods are partly based on the recently developed theory of double operator integrals in symmetric operator spaces and the theory of adjoint $C_{0}$-semigroups.

Let ℳ be a semi-finite von Neumann algebra equipped with a faithful normal trace τ. We prove a Kadec-Pelczyński type dichotomy principle for subspaces of symmetric space of measurable operators of Rademacher type 2. We study subspace structures of non-commutative Lorentz spaces Lp, q, (ℳ, τ), extending some results of Carothers and Dilworth to the non-commutative settings. In particular, we show that, under natural conditions on indices, ℓp cannot be embedded into Lp, q (ℳ, τ). As applications, we prove that for 0 < p < ∞ with p ≠ 2, ℓp cannot be strongly embedded into Lp(ℳ, τ). This provides a non-commutative extension of a result of Kalton for 0 < p < 1 and a result of Rosenthal for 1 ≦ p < 2 on Lp [0, 1].