Operators preserving the strong Birkhoff-James orthogonality on \(\mathbf{B}(H)\) (Q2261551)

Let \(\mathcal{B(H)}\) be the algebra of all bounded linear operators on a complex Hilbert space \(\mathcal{H}\) with the operator norm \(\left\| \cdot\right\| \). For \(A,B\in \mathcal{B(H)}\), we say that \(A\) is strongly Birkhoff-James orthogonal to \(B\) if \[ \left\| A\right\| \leq \left\| A+BC\right\| \] for every \(C\in \mathcal{B(H)}\). In the paper under review, the authors first present characterizations of rank-one operators and coisometries in terms of the strong Birkhoff-James orthogonality. Next, the authors describe some properties of linear surjective maps \(\Phi :\mathcal{B(H)\rightarrow B(H)}\) that preserve the strong Birkhoff-James orthogonality in both directions, i.e., \(A\) is strongly Birkhoff-James orthogonal to \(B\) if and only if \(\Phi (A)\) is strongly Birkhoff-James orthogonal to \(\Phi (B)\). Namely, they show that every such a map \(\Phi \) preserves both rank-one operators and surjective operators in both directions, and that for the identity operator \(I\in \mathcal{B(H)}\), \(\Phi (I)\) is invertible. They use these results in the proof of the main result, which is as follows. Let \(\Phi :\mathcal{B(H)\rightarrow B(H)}\) be a surjective linear map. Then \(\Phi \) preserves the strong Birkhoff-James orthogonality in both directions if and only if there are unitary operators \(U,V\in \mathcal{B(H)}\) and a nonzero \(c\in \mathbb{C}\) such that \[ \Phi (X)=cUXV \] for every \(X\in \mathcal{B(H)}\). As an almost direct corollary of the main result, the authors also characterize surjective conjugate linear maps \(\Phi :\mathcal{B(H)\rightarrow B(H)}\) that preserve the strong Birkhoff-James orthogonality in both directions. The authors end the paper with the final remark which states that in the finite dimensional case the surjectivity assumption is not necessary.