Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-7zcd7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-11T14:56:17.939Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A multiplicative Kowalski–Słodkowski theorem for $C^\star $-algebras

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2022

Cheick Touré
Affiliation:
Reading, United Kingdom e-mail: cheickkader89@hotmail.com
Rudi Brits*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
Geethika Sebastian
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India e-mail: geethikas@iisc.ac.in
*
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We present here a multiplicative version of the classical Kowalski–Słodkowski theorem, which identifies the characters among the collection of all functionals on a complex and unital Banach algebra A. In particular, we show that, if A is a $C^\star $-algebra, and if $\phi :A\to \mathbb C $ is a continuous function satisfying $ \phi (x)\phi (y) \in \sigma (xy) $ for all $x,y\in A$ (where $\sigma $ denotes the spectrum), then either $\phi $ is a character of A or $-\phi $ is a character of A.

Information

Type
Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Canadian Mathematical Society