Hermitian operators and isometries on injective tensor products of uniform algebras and \(C^{\ast}\)-algebras (Q2414779)

Let $X$ be a compact Hausdorff space and let $A \subset C(X)$ be a complex uniform algebra. It is said to be natural if, after the canonical identification via the Gelfand transformation, $X$ is taken as the maximal ideal space of $A$. For a complex Banach space $E$ endowed with a semi-inner product compatible with the norm, one identifies the injective tensor product $\overline{A \otimes E} \subset C(X,E)$. Let ${\mathcal B}(E)$ denote the space of bounded linear operators. Let $\mathrm{Her}({\mathcal B}(E)) $ denote the space of Hermitian operators. A strongly continuous map $\phi: X \rightarrow \mathrm{Her}({\mathcal B}(E))$ induces a composition operator $C_{\phi}: C(X,E) \rightarrow C(X,X)$, defined by $C_{\phi}(F)(x) = \phi(x)(F(x))$, for $F \in C(X,E)$, $x \in X$. The authors show that $T \in {\mathcal B}(\overline{A \otimes E})$ is a Hermitian operator if and only if it extends to an operator of the form $C_{\phi}$ that maps $\overline{A \otimes E}$ into itself. \par When $E$ is a unital factor $C^\ast$-algebra, they also prove a Banach-Stone theorem for surjective isometries that preserve the unit on $\overline{A \otimes E}$.