According to some lecture notes I am reading, "it is not so difficult to find an example of a commut

aligass2004yi

aligass2004yi

Answered question

2022-06-25

According to some lecture notes I am reading, "it is not so difficult to find an example of a commutative unital Banach algebra which is not isomorphic to C ( X ) for some compact Hausdorff space X"...
Well I was thinking about using the disk algebra A of continuous functions on the disk D = { z | z | 1 } which are holomorphic on the interior of D, with the sup norm.
This should be a commutative unital Banach algebra. However, since it is the beginning of the chapter about the Gelfand transformation, I would like to prove that A is not isomorphic to C ( X ) without using Gelfand's result.
What other tools could I use to prove this fact?

Answer & Explanation

rioolpijpgp

rioolpijpgp

Beginner2022-06-26Added 19 answers

Here is an argument. Assume that π : A C ( X ) is a unital Banach algebra isomorphism. Let f A. Put g = π 1 ( π ( f ) ¯ ) (that is, map f to C ( X ), conjugate it, and come back). Now
π ( g f ) = π ( g ) π ( f ) = | π ( f ) | 2 0.
Then, for any r > 0, π ( g f + r + i s ) = | π ( f ) | 2 + r + i s takes values at distance r or more from 0, so g f + r + i s is invertible. This says that r + i s (we can write a plus since s was arbitrary) is not in the image of g f. In other words, Re ( g f ) 0. You can see proof here (applied to − g f, and it may require a rotation if g f ( 0 ) is not real) that then g f is constant. In other words, there exists c R such that g f = c 1. Then
| π ( f ) | 2 = π ( g f ) = π ( c 1 ) = c 1.
Now f was arbitrary and π is onto, so every h C ( X ) has | h | 2 constant. This can only happen if X consists of a single point, and in that case A would be one-dimensional, a contradiction.
sviraju6d

sviraju6d

Beginner2022-06-27Added 6 answers

Every C algebra of dimension at least 2 must have zero divisor but the disc algebra has no zero divisor.
Proof of existence of zero divisor is based on decomposition x = x + x for a self adjoint element x. This decomposition is regarded as classical decomposition f = f + f with f + . f = 0 for real valued function f C ( X ).

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