Holomorphic idempotents and retracts in the unit ball of a commutative \(C^*\)-algebra with identity (Q1576973)

Holomorphic functions, which are idempotent, in the unit polydisk of \(\mathbb{C}^n\) and the holomorphic retracts of the polydisk were studied in the paper of L. F. Heath and T. F. Suffridge. They proved a higher-dimensional analog to Shield's theorem and characterized the idempotents and retracts by utilizing some connection between a holomorphic idempotent fixing \(0\) and its linearization at \(0\). In this paper a generalization of these results is provided to the open unit ball of a commutative \(C^*\)-algebra with identity. Namely, necessary and sufficient conditions are established for a set \(R\subset B\) to be the image of \(B\) under such an idempotent function, where \(B\) is the open unit ball of the \(C^*\)-algebra; the linear part of a holomorphic idempotent taking \(0\) to \(0\) is idempotent itself, and thus the linear representation can be used to prove several identities relating the linear and holomorphic idempotents, giving the main theorem.