Topological radicals and joint spectral radius (Q366093)

This to a reasonable extent self-contained paper deals with formulas for the joint spectral radius of a precompact subset \(M\) of a normed algebra \(A\). This radius is defined as \(\rho(M)=\lim\|M^n\|^{1/n}\). The authors are looking for formulas of the form \(\rho(M)=\max\{\rho^*(M),r(M)\}\), where \(\rho^*\) depends on the considered formula and \(r(M)=\limsup r_n(M)\) and \(r_n(M)=\sup\{\rho(a):a\in M^n\}^{1/n}\), and \(\rho(a)\) is the usual spectral radius. The paper consists of six sections. In Section 1 (introducion), the authors recall their version of the Berger-Wang formula (BW-formula) \(\rho(M)=r(M)\) valid for a (precompact) subset \(M\) of compact operators in \(A=B(X)\), which they use for showing that a semigroup of Volterra operators in \(B(X)\) has a proper closed (joint) invariant subspace. They recall here a short argument for this fact and treat it as one of the motivations for the present research. Crucial for the paper is Section 3 ``Topological radicals'' which gives several new facts about these axiomatically defined radicals. They are used in the following sections. One of these facts states that any normed algebra \(A\) has the largest compactly quasinilpotent ideal \(R_{cq}(A)\) which is a radical in the above sense. Section 4 ``Main BW-formulas'' contains the proofs of the mixed BW-formula \(\rho(M)=\max\{\rho^\chi(M),r(M)\}\) (with suitable \(\rho^\chi\)), the operator BW-formula (for \(A=B(X)\)) \(\rho(M)=\max\{\rho_e(M),r(M)\}\), where \(\rho_e\) is the essential spectral radius and the algebraic BW-formula \(\rho(M)=\max\{\rho(M/J), r(M)\}\), and \(J\) is a closed bicompact ideal of \(A\). In Section 5 ``Further strengthening of the algebraic BW-formula'' among other results the authors show that \(\rho(M)=\sup\{\rho(a):a\in M\}\) if and only if the algebra \(A\) is commutative modulo the ideal \(R_{cq}(A)\). Finally, in Section 7 ``The role of BW-formulas in the JSR continuity problem'', they obtain a sufficient condition for the continuity of \(\rho\) at \(M\) (under this condition, we have that \(\rho(M)=\sup\{\rho(K): K\subset M \;\text{is finite}\}\)).