A general Banach-Stone type theorem and applications (Q2302006)

One important class of tools in the study of the connections between algebraic and topological structures are the ``Banach-Stone type theorems'', which describe algebraic isomorphisms of algebras (or groups, lattices, etc.) of functions in terms of homeomorphisms between the underlying topological spaces. Several such theorems have been proven throughout the last century. The paper is structured as follows: In the first section the author introduces all necessary terminology and proves the main recovery theorem. In the second section, he studies an important class of maps, called ``basic'', between spaces of functions. In the third section he obtains classifications of isomorphisms for different algebraic structures on spaces of continuous functions. The new applications consist of a classification of linear isomorphisms which are isometric with respect to $ L_1$-norms, classifications of classes of isomorphisms of algebras associated to groupoids, and a classification of (uniform-metric) isometric isomorphisms between groups of circle valued functions.