Proper actions on imprimitivity bimodules and decompositions of Morita equivalences

We consider a class of proper actions of locally compact groups on imprimitivity bimodules over C*-algebras which behave like the proper actions on C*-algebras introduced by Rieffel in 1988. We prove that every such action gives rise to a Morita equivalence between a crossed product and a generalized fixed-point algebra, and in doing so make several innovations which improve the applicability of Rieffel's theory. We then show how our construction can be used to obtain canonical tensor-product decompositions of important Morita equivalences. Our results show, for example, that the different proofs of the symmetric imprimitivity theorem for actions on induced algebras yield isomorphic equivalences. A similar analysis of the symmetric imprimitivity theorem for graph algebras gives new information about the amenability of actions on graph algebras.