Non-commutative Gelfand theories. A tool-kit for operator theorists and numerical analysts (Q609464)

The theme of this book is local principles, which are formulated in the language of Banach algebras and may be regarded as noncommutative Gelfand theories. A local principle permits us to study invertibility properties of an element of an algebra by studying those of a family of simpler objects that usually are homomorphic images of the given element. Roughly speaking, a local principle is nothing but a process to construct sufficient families of homomorphisms between appropriate algebras. The simplest local principle is the Gelfand transform of a commutative Banach algebra. The book consists of a preface, an introduction, six chapters, a bibliography containing 202 references, a list of notation and a subject index. Each chapter ends with some notes and useful comments. Chapter one is devoted to the elementary theory of Banach algebras needed for understanding the book. In Chapter 2, the authors investigate the local principles of Allan-Douglas, Simonenko and Gohberg-Krupnik. Chapter 3 deals with Banach algebras generated by idempotents. These three chapters form the first part of the book. The second part is devoted to a case study in which local principles are applied to several particular Banach algebras generated by certain operators (e.g., singular integral operators in Chapter 4 and convolution operators in Chapter 5) or by approximation sequences of special operators, studied in Chapter 6. The book will be useful for students and researchers working in operator theory, functional analysis and numerical analysis.