Nonlinear maps preserving similarity on \(\mathcal B(H)\) (Q875003)

Let \(X\) be a Banach space of dimension \(\geq 3\) and let \(\sim\) denote the similarity relation. The authors classify surjections \(\Phi:B(X)\to B(X)\) which enjoy the property \(T+S\sim R\) (respectively, \(T-S\sim R\)) precisely when the same holds for their \(\Phi\)-images. It is interesting that no linearity on the mapping \(\Phi\) is imposed in advance. For infinite-dimensional spaces, it turns out that such maps are scalar multiples of linear or conjugate-linear Jordan isomorphisms. When \(\dim X<\infty\), one must supplement the result by adding an additive trace-like function. The proof is a reduction to bijective maps which preserve rank-one nilpotents in the following way: given two of them, \(T\) and \(S\), one has that \(T+S\) is a rank-one nilpotent precisely when the same holds for their images.