Unimodular Matrices in Banach Algebra Theory Gustavo Corach; Angel R. Larotonda Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, Volume 96, Issue 3 (Mar., 1986), 473-477, Stable URL hitp://links jstor-org/siisici=0002-9939% 28 198603%2996%3A3%3C473%3AUMIBAT%3E2,0,CO%3B2-5 ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www, stor orglabout/terms.html. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sc printed page of such transmission. Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society is published by American Mathematical Society. Please contact the publisher for further permissions regarding the use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hupy/www.jstor.org/joumals/ams. hm Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society (©1986 American Mathematical Society ISTOR and the ISTOR logo are trademarks of JSTOR, and are Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office For more information on JSTOR contact jstor-info@umich edu, ©2003 JSTOR bhupslwww jstor.org/ Mon Aug 4 12:38:23 2003UNIMODULAR MATRICES IN BANACH ALGEBRA THEORY GUSTAVO CORACH AND ANGEL R, LAROTONDA [ABSIRACE Let A be a sing with Land denote by L (sesp. R) the set of left sp Fight invertible elements of 4. If A hasan involution +, there isa natual bijection between Land R. In general, it seems that there is no such bition: if is a Banach algebra, Land R are open subsets of 4, and they have the same cardinality. More generally, we prove that the spaces U,(4") of m x klltinvertible mates and Z(A") of & x might invertible matrices ate homotopically equivalent. As a ‘orolary, we answer negatively two questions of Ref 12}. 1. Let 4 be a ring (with an identity element 1) and k Uda”). 1.1, Proposition. Let A be a ring, x © A™4, and define T.: M,(A) > A™ by Ta) = ox. Then x is unimodular if and only if T, is a direct epimorphism; i.e. there is an A-linear map S: A"** —» M,(A) such that T,° $= 1 gyn. ProoF. Obvious, From now on, A denotes a (real or complex) Banach algebra, Our purpose is to study the fibration properties of the mappings = TIGL,(A): GLA) + UA"), for x = U,(A") and p: S,(A") + U,(A"). 1.2, Lesa. ()) U(A") is open in AP (ii) t,t continuous, for everyx © UA") (ii) pis continuous. Proor. It is clear that 1, and p are continuous, because they are restrictions of linear mappings. If x9 € A"** is unimodular and y - x= 1 M,(A), there is a neighborhood U of x, in A"** such that y = x © GL4(A) for every x € U, for the set of invertible elements of a Banach algebra is open, But itis evident that U is contained in Uy(A"). Thus U;( A") is open as claimed, In view of the theory of Banach manifolds, as developed in Lang {7}, we can prove the next result, Recall that a differentiable map f: X > ¥ is a submersion at x © X if the derivative of f at x © X is a direct epimorphism from the tangent space of X at x onto the tangent space of Y at f(x) Received by the eitors June 19,1984 and, in revise form, March 1, 1985, 1980 Mashemaucs Subject Clasicaion. Primary 46HOS, I8F25, Secondary SSRIO, SSP1O, 16425, 19H6 American Mathematical Soxsty (002.9939/86 5.00 8.25 per page ana4 GUSTAVO CORACH AND A R_LAROTONDA 1.3. Proposition. Ler A be a Banach algebra and x © A"**. Then the following hold. (1) If x © UA"), then t,: GL,(A) > U(A") is a submersion Q) S,(A") is Banach manifold. Poor. (1) If x € Ux(A"), the derivative of 1, at any @ © GL.,(A) coincides with T,, which is a direct epimorphism, by 1.1, so 1, is a submersion ato. (Q) Following Raeburn [11], we need only prove that the derivative of ¢: APA x AO" 5 MCA), defined by Q(x, ») = y= x, at any (Xp, Yo) © Se( A") is direct epimorphism for $,(A") = 6"). Now, the derivative of @ at (xo, Jp) is the A-linear map (w,2) > 2 =x + yo" (w © APA, 2 © Z4**), and the map a+ 1/2x9a, ayy) (@ = M,(A)) is a ight inverse of D&(xp, Io). 1.4. COROLLARY. For every x € U,(A"), the map t,: GL,(A) + U,(A") is open, and its image GL.,(A) * x is open and closed in U,(A")- Proor. Clearly a submersion is an open map. Thus, for every 2 © U,(4"), GL,(A) += is open in U,(A"). But GL,(A) is the orbit of 2 under the action of. GL,(A) on U,(4") given by left multiplication, so it is closed in U,(A"): in fact, ‘when all orbits are open, they are also closed. 1.5, Remarks. (1) Observe that, U,(A") belongs to the orbit GL,(A) - x. the entire connected component of z in U,(A") is contained in the same orbit. This ‘obvious (in view of 1.4) fact has interesting consequences, as we shall see. 2) If in the proof of 1.4 we consider the action of GL,(A)o, the connected ‘component of the neutral element, on U,(A"), we get that the connected component of x in U,(A") is GL,(A)o* x 1.6, TazoEM. Let A be a Banach algebra and x © U,(A"). Then the following hold. (9 £, induces a principal locally trivial fibre bundle GL.,( A) -» GL,(A) ° x: Gil): GL,(A) + U((A") is a Serre fibration. (iii) 1, is surjective if and only if the induced mapping %(1,): %(GL,(A)) > ‘my(Ug(A")) is onto. In particular, tis surjective if U,( A") is connected. Proor. Let G, be the stabilizer of x; ie G, = {¢ € GL,(A): 0+ x = x}. Then G, is a Banach-Lie subgroup of GL,,(A), and, by 1.4, GL,(A) x may be identified ‘with the homogeneous space GL.,(A)/G,. So, assertion (i) follows from the general theory of Banach-Lie groups as Bourbaki(1] or Raeburn {11} For the proof of (ii), it is well known that any locally trivial bundle over a paracompact base space is a Serre fibration (see Dold (3). In our case, U,(A") is metrizable, a fortiori paracompact. The proof of (iii) is now obvious. ‘The problem of determining whether an element 2 of U,(A") belongs to GL,(A") x for a fixed x © U,(A") is, in general, very difficult. Let us give an example. Let A be the algebra of real continuous functions on the unit sphere $*~! of R", and let Xyy = Uyesesm, be the coordinate functions. Clearly, x = (xy,.--,%,) belongs toLUNIMODULAR MATRICES IN BANACH ALGEBRA THEORY a5 UA) for x 4x = Dox? = 1. Let # be the map 0 0 - ey (where ey is the first canonical veetor of A") from GL,(A) into U,(A"). We shall show that x belongs to GL,(A)- ¢; only if m= 2,4, or 8 In fact, x © GL,(A) ey means that there is a basis (01, 0:,--..0,} of A” with 0, = x. Let S be the free supplement of A= x generated by (0j,.--y%,) and S’=(v€ A": (v,x) = 0). Then $” is another supplement of x, so S and S’ are isomorphic and S’ must be free. But S’ identifies with the A-module of continuous sections of the tangent bundle 7(S"-!) of S** (see Swan [13). Thus, since S’ is free, r(S*~') must be a trivial bundle, and this may happen only if m = 2,4, or 8, as claimed. Let A be a ring, and let e be the m X k-matrix whose columns are, in order, the first k canonical vectors of AM. Let us set ¢=f,: GL,(A)—> Uj(A"). 4 is (1 k)-Hermite if + is onto, (This terminology is consistent with that of Lam [6], at least for commutative rings.) The following lemma shows that the choice of e is irrelevant. 1.7. LEMMA. Let A be a ring. Then A is (n,k)}-Hermite if and only if t, GL,(A) > U,(A") is onto for every x © U,(A"). PROOF. Suppose that A is (n, k)-Hermite, and take 2 and x in U,(A"). Then there exist + and o in GL,(A) such that z= 7-e and x= oe; then t,(70")= 7-0 x = 2, The converse is trivial From L&(iil) we get 1.8. PROPOSITION. Let A be a Banach algebra. Then A is (n, k)-Hermite if and only if mo(t) is onto. In particular, A is (n, k)-Hermite if U(A") is connected. 1.9. Examptes. (1) Let 4 be a complex commutative Banach algebra with spectrum X(A). It is well known that m(U,(4")) coincides with the set of homotopy classes of maps from X(A) into U,(C*) (see Novodvorski [9], Taylor [14] and Raeburn [11). Lin [8] proved that A is (n, k)-Hermite if and only if C(X(A)), the algebra of complex continuous functions on X(), is; moreover, for x and =z in U,(A"), = belongs to GL,,(A) x if and only if the Gelfand transform 2 belongs to GL,(C(X(A)))-&. In particular, if X(A) is dominated by an m-dimensional space, ‘with m < 2(n ~ k), then A is (n, k)-Hermite. This last fact has also been proved by Lin {8}. (2) Let J be a Hilbert space and A the algebra of bounded linear operators on 9, Then GL,(A) is contractible for every n (Kuiper [5)). Now, A is isomorphic to A™* (as A-modules and as Banach spaces), and it is easy to see that U,(A") is homeomorphic to U,(4"), which is disconnected, as we shall see 2.6(ii). Then A cannot be (n, k)-Hermite for any k U,(A") is a locally trivial bundle with contractible fibre. PROOF. For (xo, Jo) © S,(A") we define g: A™! + GL,(A) x9 CA" by (2) = expC, yp) pe The derivative of @ at 0 € A"™* is the idemtity map of A™**, so by the inverse function theorem (1, 7] there exist neighborhoods U of 0 in A"™* and V of x9 in U,(A") such that 6 is a diffeomorphism from U onto V. We define a section of f,, over V, s: V > GL,(A), by s(x) = exp(-!(x) yo): In fact, #, © 86x) = s(x) + xq = x for every x & V and 5(X9) = Inj) We now define a trivializing map g: p"(V) > V x N by g(x, y) = (x9 -5(x) — yy), where N= (y @ AM": y xg = 0); the inverse of g is A: VX N+ pV), B(x, 2) = ((2 + Yo) 3a)". The fibre p“'(x), for x € V, is the affine manifold ((4.(y +9) (0): y EN}, obviously contractible, 2.2. COROLLARY. The projection p is a homotopy equivalence and it admits a global section. Poor. From the examination of the homotopy sequence of p, it follows that p is a weak homotopy equivalence, so, by a result of Palais (10, Theorem 15}, since S\(A") and U,(A") are metrizable manifolds (by 1.2 and 1.3), p is a homotopy equivalence. The second assertion follows from a result of Godement (see Dold [3,p. 223)) which states that a fibre bundle with contractible fibre over a paracompact space has a global section, 23. CoROLLARY. For every compact pair (Z,Y), every map f: (ZY) (UA. ), and every yy € AM" such that yy =o VE My(A), there is a lifting, (ZY) > (SLAIN He BF 2.4, COROLLARY. For every compact space X the natural inclusion Uy(A(X)") > C(X,U(A")) (where A(X) is the algebra of maps from X into A) is a homeomor- his. We have been studying left unimodular matrices. We can also consider right ‘unimodular matrices: y © 4**" (k < n) is right nimadular if there exists x © A*** such that y-x=1€M,(A). OF course, the set ,U(A*) of right unimodular Imatrices is the image of the second projection p,: S,(A") + A®**, We may reproduce all the results obtained for U,(4") in this new context. In particular, we may prove that p,: 5,(4") —,U(A")is a homotopy equivalence. Thus, we have 2.5. Conontany. U,(A") and ,U(A") are homotopically equivalent. ReMARk. This result answers negatively question 48 of Rieffel [12] and generalizes his Proposition 10.2 to any Banach algebra 4. We now consider the case m = k= 1, so Ui(A!) = L and U(A') = R 2.6. THEOREM. Let A be a Banach algebra. Then the following hold. () Land R are homotopically equivalent. (Gi) The connected components of 1 in L, R and G (= group of units of A) coincide; in particular, G is connected if L or R are connected and, in this case, G = L= R. Thus, Land R are disconnected if G # Lor G # R.UNIMODULAR MATRICES IN BANACH ALGEBRA THEORY ar ‘The proof follows directly from 2.5 and the following obvious lemma. 2.7, Leman. G is open and closed in Land R. REFERENCES LN. Bourbaki, Varies, Fasc de résultats, Hermann, Pats, 1967, 2.G, Corach and A.R.Larotonda, 4 stabilization theorem for Banach algebras, 3, Algebra (to app). 3.A. Dold, Partons of ni the theory of fitratons, Ann. of Math. (2) 7B (1963), 223-255, 4.8. Hu, Homotopy thon, Academie Press, New York, 1959. 5.N. Kuiper. The homotopy oye ofthe unitary group of Hilbert spac, Topology’ 3 (1968), 19-30. 6.T. ¥. 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Math, Soe. 105 (1962), 264-277 14. 1.L, Taylor, Topological maria of the muximal ideal space ofa Banach algebra, Adv. in Math 19 (01976), 149-206, 7. ® Anal ° INsTrTuT0 ANGEWTINO DE MATEMATICA, VIAMONTE 1636, 1085 BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA DeranraMeNto DE Matta hnics, FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS EXACTAS, UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES, CCiuban Universttani, 1428 BUENOS AIRIS, ARGENTINA