Facial structure of the trace class (Q1805497)

This paper is another contribution to the study of the metric geometry of the unit ball in Schatten \(p\)-classes of operators on a Hilbert space \(H\). In particular, the author proves the following result, which is a generalization to the infinite dimensional case of a result of \textit{W. So} [Linear Multilinear Algebra 27, No. 3, 207-212 (1990; Zbl 0706.15027)], which was given in somewhat different language. Theorem: A subset \(F\) of the unit ball \(B\) in the space of trace class operators on \(H\) is a proper, closed face of \(B\) if and only if there exists a non-zero partial isometry \(U\) on \(H\) for which \[ F= \{UP\mid P\geq 0 \text{ on }H, \text{ tr}(P)=1, \text{ and ker \(P\) contains ker }U\}. \]