Compact and Weakly Compact Homomorphisms on Fréchet Algebras of Holomorphic Functions (Q4531465)

The authors study homomorphisms between Fréchet algebras, in particular composition operators \(T_g\) from \(H_b(O)\) into \(H_b(U)\), where \(O\) and \(U\) are absolutely convex open subsets of complex Banach spaces \(E\) and \(F\), respectively, \(H_b(V)\) denotes the space of all holomorphic functions on \(V\) of bounded type equipped with the topology of uniform convergence on \(V\)-bounded subsets of \(V\) (\(V=U,O\)), and \(g\) is in \(H_b(U;O)\). Some of the main results are the following. (1) Any pointwise bounded homomorphism \(T\) from a Fréchet algebra \(A\) into \(H_b(F)\) (i.e., \(T\) maps some 0-neighbourhood of \(A\) into a pointwise bounded subset of \(H_b(F)\)) is a rank one mapping. (2) Let \(g:U \rightarrow O\) be analytic and mapping \(U\)-bounded sets into \(\sigma(E,P(E))\) relatively compact subsets of \(O\). Then \(T_g : H_b(O) \rightarrow H_b(U)\) maps bounded sets into relatively weakly compact ones. (\(\sigma(E,P(E))\) is the coarsest topology on \(E\) making all norm continuous polynomials on \(E\) continuous.) Let \(g\) be a uniformly continuous mapping from the open unit ball \(B_F\) of \(F\) into the open unit ball \(B_E\) of \(E\). If the composition operator from \(H_b(B_E)\) into \(H_b(B_F)\) is compact, then \(T_g\) takes values in \(H^\infty(B_F)\) and is compact as an operator from \(H_b(B_E)\) into \(H^\infty(B_F)\). The same holds for the weakly compact case if \(E\) has the approximation property. These results extend, inter alia, Theorem 4.6 in \textit{M. González} and \textit{J. Gutiérrez} [Math. Nachr. 186, 131-145 (1997; Zbl 0907.47026)]. Some examples show that the additional hypotheses cannot be avoided.