A geometric characterization of structural projections on a JBW\(^{\ast}\)-triple. (Q1403844)

In the last twenty-five years, the attention of many researchers has focused on the study of certain complex Banach spaces, alias JB\(^*\)-triples, i.e., Banach spaces for which the group of biholomorphic automorphisms of the open unit ball acts transitively. \textit{W. Kaup} [Math. Z. 183, 503--529 (1983; Zbl 0519.32024)] showed that this property is equivalent to the existence of a ternary algebraic structure satisfying certain algebraic-metric properties. From the purely algebraic view point such Banach spaces are anisotropic Jordan\(^*\)-triples. The class of JB\(^*\)-triples includes all \(C^*\)-algebras, JB\(^*\)-algebras, and the ranges of contractive projections on these spaces. We refer to the papers due to \textit{P. A. Rodriguez} and \textit{B. Russo} [Proc. Oberwolfach Conf. 1992, 97--186 and 209--280 (1994; Zbl 0818.17036 and Zbl 0805.46072)] and also to the one by \textit{C.-H. Chu} and \textit{P. Mellon} [Expo. Math. 16, 157--180 (1998; Zbl 0937.58003)] for detailed surveys on JB\(^*\)-triples. An important property in JB\(^*\)-triples is that the triple product and the norm are uniquely determined, so there exists a constant temptation to obtain geometric characterizations of purely algebraic qualities. This is the case in this very nice paper where the authors obtain, as main result, a geometric characterization of structural projections on JBW\(^*\)-triples, which are JB\(^*\)-triples that are Banach dual spaces. More concretely: We recall that a structural projection, \(P\), on an anisotropic Jordan\(^*\)-triple, \(A\), is a linear projection satisfying \[ P\{a,Pb,c\}= \{Pa,b,Pc\} \] for all elements \(a,b\) and \(c\) in \(A\). The above property is equivalent to the fact that the range of \(P\) is a complemented subtriple of \(A\) [see \textit{C. M. Edwards}, \textit{K. McCrimmon} and \textit{G. T. Rüttimann}, J. Funct. Anal. 139, 196--224 (1996; Zbl 0899.46056) and \textit{O. Loos} and \textit{E. Neher}, J. Algebra 166, 255--295 (1994; Zbl 0827.17032)]. Given a subset \(Y\) of a complex Banach space \(X\), the L-orthogonal complement of \(Y\) is defined as the set of elements \(x\) in \(X\) such that \[ \| x\pm y\| = \| x\| + \| y\| \] for all \(y\) in \(Y\). A contractive projection \(P\) on \(X\) is said to be neutral if for every \(x\) in \(X\) satisfying \(\| Px \|= \| x\|\), we have \(Px=x\), and is called a GL-projection if the L-orthogonal of the range of \(P\) is contained in the kernel of \(P\). The authors prove that for a JBW\(^*\)-triple, \(E\), with predual \(E_*\), a linear projection \(P\) on \(E\) is structural if and only if it is the adjoint of a neutral GL-projection on \(E_*\).