Reducibility of invertible tuples to the principal component in commutative Banach algebras (Q517240)

The ideas of algebraic and topological \(K\)-theory have spread to topological algebras, commutative or not. Right now, the \(K\)-theoretical concepts of \(C^*\)-algebras form a solid area of independent research. This does not mean that all such questions pertaining to commutative Banach algebras have been solved or become trivial. The notion of stable rank, in particular, has a glorious history in complete function algebras. The transfer principle established by \textit{G. Corach} and \textit{F. D. Suárez} [Topology Appl. 21, 1--8 (1985; Zbl 0606.46033)] states, roughly speaking, that the Gelfand transform is faithful with respect to row reduction in invertible column vectors over the given base. The notion of reducible but invertible tuple of elements in a commutative Banach algebra is related to this collapsing operation. In an inspired and self-contained, original approach, the authors propose a reduction to the connected component of the unit in a Banach algebra. The main results have elegant purely analytic proofs and they are complemented by significant topological examples in real affine spaces.