Off-diagonal corners of subalgebras of \(\mathcal{L}(\mathbb{C}^n)\) (Q2226400)

Every \(\mathcal{C}^\ast\)-subalgebra \(\mathcal{A}\subseteq M_n(\mathbb{C})\) is unitarily equivalent to a direct sum of subalgebras of the form \( M_m(\mathbb{C})\otimes I_n\) for suitable integers \(m,n\). A possible way to prove this is to partition the identity of \(\mathcal{A}\) by pairwise orthogonal (self-adjoint) projections \(P_i\) for which \(\dim P_i\mathcal{A} P_i=1\) and then argue that the dimensions of the off-diagonal blocks satisfy \(\dim P_i\mathcal{A}P_j\le 1\). The present paper provides a kind of converse to this. Given a fixed nontrivial projection \(P\in M_n(\mathbb{C})\) the aim is to find the upper bound on the dimension of unital subalgebras \(\mathcal{A}\subseteq M_n(\mathbb{C})\) when the dimension of their off-diagonal block, \(\dim(I-P)\mathcal{A}P=d\), is given. Without additional assumptions this question is too general for a definite answer. For example, one can take any unital subalgebras \(\mathcal{A}\subseteq M_m(\mathbb{C})\) and \(\mathcal{B}\subseteq M_n(\mathbb{C})\) and form the algebra \(\mathcal{C}= \mathcal{A}\oplus \mathcal{B}\subseteq M_{m+n}(\mathbb{C})\) whose \((2,1)\) off-diagonal block is zero-dimensional. For this reason, the authors restrict themselves to {essential} off-diagonal blocks, that is, they assume that the operators in \((I-P)\mathcal{A}P|_{\mathrm{ran}(P)}\) annihilate no common nonzero vector and that their ranges are not contained in a common proper subspace. Under these assumptions, it is shown that any unital subalgebra \(\mathcal{A}\subseteq M_n(\mathbb{C})\) satisfies \[\dim\mathcal{A}\le d(1+d)^2, \qquad d=\dim (I-P)\mathcal{A}P,\] and, modulo a constant factor, the estimate is asymptotically sharp. The upper bound is improved to \(\dim\mathcal{A}\le 2d^2+d-1\) (asymptotically sharp modulo a constant factor \(2\)) when the off-diagonal block \((I-P)\mathcal{A}P|_{\mathrm{ran}(P)}\) contains an operator of maximal rank and \(\mathrm{rank}\, P\le \mathrm{rank}\, (I-P)\); if, in addition, \(\mathrm{rank}\, P=\mathrm{rank}\, (I-P)\) the upper bound is further improved to \(\dim\mathcal{A}\le 4d\) (sharp). With additional assumptions on the essential off-diagonal block much more can be said. We merely mention here two results that the authors obtain: (i) A complete classification of unital algebras admitting a one-dimensional essential off-diagonal block -- such a block must necessarily be square-sized and must contain an invertible operator while the corresponding algebras are at most four-dimensional. (ii) If a unital algebra \(\mathcal{A}\) admits a square-sized, essential off-diagonal block of dimension two, then \(\dim\mathcal{A}\le 8\) and this is further reduced to \(\dim\mathcal{A}\le 4\) when the off-diagonal block does not contain an invertible operator. The final chapter discusses which \(\mathcal{C}^\ast\)-subalgebras of \(M_{2n}(\mathbb{C})\) admit an essential off-diagonal square-sized block of dimension two. The dimension of such algebras is between three and eight and they are thus \(\ast\)-isomorphic to (i) \(M_2(\mathbb{C})\oplus M_2(\mathbb{C})\) or (ii) \(\mathbb{C}^k\) or (iii) \(M_2(\mathbb{C})\oplus \mathbb{C}^k\) for suitable integer \(k\). A case-by-case study shows that type (ii) admits an embedding into a suitable \(\mathbb{C}^{2n}\) with required off-diagonal block only when \(k=3,4\) and type (iii) only when \(k=0,2\).