Preserving commutativity (Q5928860)

The problem of characteristic linear maps preserving commutativity is studied. The assumption of preserving commutativity can be reformulated as preserving zero Lie products. It is shown for a linear operator \(\theta:M_n\to M_r\) which preserves commutativity that either \(\text{Im}(\theta)\) is commutative or \(n=r\) and that there exist an invertible matrix \(A\in M_n\), a linear functional \(f\) on \(M_n\), and a nonzero scalar \(c\) such that \(\theta\) is of certain forms. The case \(n=3\) and the nilpotent case are dealt with.