Additive mappings preserving operators of rank one (Q2365669)

The authors study additive mappings that preserve rank one operators or preserve projections of rank one. Let \(F(X)\) denote the algebra of finite rank operators on a Banach space \(X\). \(\phi: F(X)\to F(X)\) preserves rank one operators if \(\phi(A)\) is of rank one whenever \(A\) is of rank one. The general form of surjective additive mappings that preserve rank one operators is obtained. When \(X\) is a real Banach space, these must be linear but this need not be so in a complex space. When specialized to the linear case, the present methods provide new proofs of known characterizations.