Multiplicative preservers of higher-dimensional numerical ranges (Q898798)

Let \(H\) be a complex separable Hilbert space and \(k\) be a positive integer smaller than the dimension of \(H\). For an operator \(A\in B(H)\), the \(k\)-dimensional numerical range of \(A\) is defined by \[ W_k(A)=\{\tfrac{1}{k}\,\text{tr}(PAP)\, :\, P \,\text{is a projection with rank}\, k\}. \] When \(k=1\), the \(1\)-dimensional numerical range coincides with the classical numerical range, that is, \[ W_1(A)=W(A)=\{\langle Ax,x\rangle , x\in H, \quad \|x\|=1\}. \] Recently, multiplicative preserver problems have attracted the attention of several mathematicians. In this paper, the authors characterize those multiplicative maps \(\phi: B(H) \rightarrow B(H)\) that preserve the \(k\)-dimensional numerical range. Under some additional assumptions, the characterization has been known before, however, the novelty of this paper is that the surjectivity and continuity of \(\phi\) are not assumed. It is shown that, for \(k\geq 2\), an arbitrary multiplicative mapping \(\phi\) on \(B(H)\) satisfies \(W_k(\phi(A))=W_k(A)\) for all \(A\in B(H)\) if and only if there is a unitary operator \(U\in B(H)\) such that \(\phi(A)=UAU^*\).