Identities, approximate identities and topological divisors of zero in Banach algebras (Q2014117)

The authors study non-unital Banach algebras in which all elements are topological divisors of zero and observe that this property is strictly connected with the property of possessing approximate identities. An interesting by-product is Theorem 1.13 stating that, for a semisimple unital Banach algebra \(A\), its socle \(\mathrm{Soc}(A)\) is infinite dimensional if and only if each of its elements is a topological divisor of zero within \(\mathrm{Soc}(A)\).