Continuous families of properly infinite \(C^*\)-algebras (Q2835230)

A unital \(C^*\)-algebra \(A\) is ``properly infinite'' if one of the following equivalent conditions is true, see Definition 2.1: (a) It contains two isometries with mutually orthogonal range projections; (b) It contains a unital copy of the simple Cuntz \(C^*\)-algebra \(O_\infty\) generated by infinitely many isometries with pairwise orthogonal ranges. (c) If it is a \(C^*\)-algebra and \(E\) is a right Hilbert \(A\)-module, \(\mathcal L(E)\) the set of all adjointable \(A\)-linear operators acting on \(\mathcal E\) and \(\mathcal K(\mathcal E)\subset \mathcal L(\mathcal E)\) the closed two-sided ideal \(\mathcal K\) of compact operators generated by the rank 1 operators on the Hilbert space \(\ell^2 (\mathbb C)\). (d) If it is abelian, then \(A \to \mathcal L(\mathcal E)\) and \(a\zeta = \zeta a\) for \(a \in A\) and \(\zeta \in\mathcal E\). It is known that any unital separable continuous \( C(X)\)-algebra with properly infinite fibres is properly infinite if the compact Hausdorff space \(X\) has ``finite topological dimension''. The author studies conditions under which this is still the case if the compact space \(X\) has infinite topological dimension for this being. The main result of the paper under review is Proposition 3.3, stating that all separable unital continuous \(C(X)\)-algebras with properly infinite fibers are infinite \(C^*\)-algebras if and only if the full unital free product \(\mathcal T_2 *_\mathbb C \mathcal T_2\) is \(K_1\)-injective.