Isometries of the geodesic distances for the space of invertible positive operators and matrices (Q2442255)

Let \(\mathcal{A}_{+}^{-1}\) be the space of all invertible positive elements of a unital \(C^*\)-algebra. In this space, \[ \gamma_{ab}(t) = a^{1/2} \left( a^{-1/2}ba^{-1/2} \right)^{t} a^{1/2} \] gives the unique geodesic joining \(a\) and \(b\) in \(\mathcal{A}_{+}^{-}\). The geodesic distance between \(a\) and \(b\), \[ d_{T}(a,b)= \left\| \log \left( a^{-1/2}ba^{-1/2} \right) \right\| \] is the so-called Thompson metric. \textit{L. Molnár} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 137, No. 11, 3849--3859 (2009; Zbl 1184.46021)] and \textit{L. Molnár} and \textit{G. Nagy} [Electron. J. Linear Algebra 20, 79--89 (2010; Zbl 1195.46017)] gave a complete description of Thompson isometries in the case of the algebra \(B(H)\) of bounded linear operators on a Hilbert space. This result was extended in [\textit{O. Hatori} and \textit{L. Molnár}, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 409, No.~1, 158--167 (2014; Zbl 1306.46053)] to arbitrary unital \(C^*\)-algebras. Motivated by some ideas of \textit{F. Hiai} and \textit{D. Petz} [Linear Algebra Appl. 430, No. 11--12, 3105--3130 (2009; Zbl 1163.53011); Linear Algebra Appl. 436, No. 7, 2117--2136 (2012; Zbl 1309.53017)], the authors give a description of the surjective isometries for two families of metrics: \[ d_{\alpha}(a,b) = \left\| \log \left( a^{-\alpha/2}b^{\alpha} a^{-\alpha/2} \right)^{1/\alpha} \right\| \quad ( \alpha \in \mathbb{R},\;\alpha \neq 0) \] and \[ D_{r}(a,b)= \begin{cases} \frac{1}{r} \left\| a^{r}-b^{r} \right\| & \text{if \(r \neq 0\)}, \\ \left\| \log a - \log b \right\| & \text{if \(r=0\)}, \end{cases} \] for each \(a, b \in \mathcal{A}_{+}^{-1}\). As an example of such a description, the authors prove that, given unital \(C^*\)-algebras \(\mathcal{A}_{1}\) and \(\mathcal{A}_{2}\), a surjective isometry \(T : ( \mathcal{A}_{1+}^{-1}, d_{\alpha}) \rightarrow ( \mathcal{A}_{2+}^{-1}, d_{\alpha})\) has the form \[ T(a)= \left\{ T(e)^{\alpha/2} \left( p J(a) + (e-p)J(a^{-1}) \right)^{\alpha} T(e)^{\alpha/2} \right\}^{1/\alpha} \] for a convenient central projection \(p \in \mathcal{A}_{2}\) and Jordan \(*\)-isomorphism \(J : \mathcal{A}_{1} \rightarrow \mathcal{A}_{2}\).