Exposed points of the unit ball of \({\mathcal L}(H)\) (Q2640117)

A point \(q_ 0\) in a convex subset Q of a real or complex normed linear space E is said to be exposed if there exists a continuous real-linear functional f: \(E\to {\mathbb{R}}\) such that \(f(q_ 0)>f(q)\) for all \(q\in Q\setminus \{q_ 0\}\), whilst it is strongly exposed if, in addition, \(q_ n\to q_ 0\) for every sequence \(\{q_ n\}\) in Q for which \(f(q_ n)\to f(q_ 0)\). In this short note, the author investigates the exposed points of the unit ball B of the space \({\mathcal L}(H)\) of all bounded linear operators on a real or complex Hilbert space H.. He shows that (a) if H is separable, then each extreme point of B is exposed; (b) if H is infinite-dimensional, then B contains no strongly exposed points; (c) if H is not separable, then B contains no exposed points. The proofs rely on the known result that an operator is an extreme point of B if and only if it is either an isometry or a coisometry.