Isometries on noncommutative symmetric spaces (Q2243850)

A bounded linear operator \(T\) on a complex Banach space \(\mathcal X\) is said to be Hermitian if the numerical range \(\{\langle Tx,x \rangle: x\in\mathcal X\), \(\langle x,x\rangle=1\}\) of \(T\) is real, where \({\langle \cdot,\cdot\rangle }\) is a semi-inner product on \(\mathcal X\) consistent with the norm of \(\mathcal X\). Let \(\mathcal M\) be an atomless semifinite von Neumann algebra equipped with a faithful normal semifinite trace \(\tau\) (or else, an atomic von Neumann algebra with all atoms having the same trace) acting on a separable Hilbert space and let \(E(\mathcal M, \tau)\) be a separable symmetric space of \(\tau\)-measurable operators, whose norm is not proportional to the Hilbert norm \(\|\cdot\|_2\) on \(L^2(\mathcal M,\tau)\). The authors in this article show that a bounded operator \(T\) on \(E(\mathcal M, \tau)\) is Hermitian if and only if there exist selfadjoint operators \(A\) and \(B\) in \(\mathcal M\) such that \(Tx=Ax+xB\) for all \(x\in E(\mathcal M, \tau)\). In particular, \(T\) may be extended to a bounded Hermitian operator on the von Neumann algebra \(\mathcal M\). Furthermore, they provide a description of all surjective linear isometries between these spaces. In fact, let \(E(\mathcal M_1,\tau_1)\) and \(E(\mathcal M_2, \tau_2)\) be two such spaces. If \(T\) is a surjective isometry from \(E(\mathcal M_1,\tau_1)\) onto \(E(\mathcal M_2, \tau_2)\), then there exist two sequences of operators: \(\{A_n: 1\leq n<\infty\}\subset E(\mathcal M_2,\tau_2)\) whose elements are pairwise disjointly supported from the right and \(\{B_n:1\leq n<\infty\}\subseteq E(\mathcal M_2,\tau_2)\) whose elements are pairwise disjointly supported from the left, and a surjective Jordan \(*\)-isomorphism \(J\) from \(\mathcal M_1\) onto \(\mathcal M_2\), and a central projection \(z\in \mathcal M_2\) such that, for any \(x\in E(\mathcal M_1,\tau_1)\cap \mathcal M_1\), \(T(x)=\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}(A_nJ(x)z+J(x)(I-z)B_n)\), where the series converges in the norm of the space \(E(\mathcal M_2,\tau_2)\).