Roots in operator and Banach algebras (Q2629359)

An operator algebra is a closed subalgebra of \(B(H)\), for a complex Hilbert space \(H\). In this paper, the authors show that several known facts concerning roots of matrices generalize to operator algebras and Banach algebras. They establish some basic properties of roots. They also show that the `sign' of a matrix generalizes to Banach algebras, and that Drury's variant of the `geometric mean' of matrices generalizes to operators on a Hilbert space. They also show that the so-called Newton (or Babylonian), binomial, Visser, and Halley iterative methods for the root converge to the root in Banach and operator algebras under various mild hypotheses inspired by the matrix theory literature.