Spectral characterization of idempotents and invertibility preserving linear maps (Q1293767)

A unital invertibility preserving (UIP) map of rings is \(\varphi\colon A\to B\) satisfying \(\varphi(1_A)=1_B\) and \(\varphi(a)\) is invertible in \(B\) for any invertible \(a\in A\). A question of \textit{I. Kaplansky} [Algebraic and analytic aspects of operator algebras, Reg. Conf. Ser. Math. 1 (1970; Zbl 0217.44902)] asks what conditions on \(A\) and \(B\) force an additive UIP map \(\varphi\colon A\to B\) to be a Jordan homomorphism. To study this, the authors characterize idempotents in \(M_n(\mathbb{C})\) as those \(A\in M_n(\mathbb{C})\) having spectrum \(\{0,1\}\), so that for any \(T\in M_n(\mathbb{C})\) there is a fixed \(K>0\) with \(|\alpha|+K\) an upper bound for the spectral radii of \(\alpha A+T\) and \(\alpha(I_n-A)+T\), for all \(\alpha\in\mathbb{C}\). Using this result it follows first that a linear UIP map from \(M_n(\mathbb{C})\) to itself sends idempotents to idempotents, and then that such a map is a Jordan automorphism, so an associative automorphism or antiautomorphism. The authors hope that their methods may lead to a solution of Kaplansky's question for more general rings containing many idempotents.