Mappings that preserve pairs of operators with zero triple Jordan product (Q996281)

Let \(F\) be a field, and let \(S_1\) and \(S_2\) be subsets of the algebra \(M_n(F)\), \(n\geq 3\), that contain all rank-one idempotents. The main result characterizes surjective maps \(\varphi:S_1\to S_2\) satisfying the following condition: for all \(A,B\in S_1\), \(ABA =0\) if and only if \(\varphi(A)\varphi(B)\varphi(A)=0\). It is shown that \(\varphi\) must take one of the following two forms: either \(\varphi(A) = \alpha(A)\cdot TA^\sigma T^{-1}\) for all \(A\in S_1\), or \(\varphi(A) = \alpha(A)\cdot T(A^\sigma)^t T^{-1}\) for all \(A\in S_1\). Here, \(\alpha\) is a function from \(S_1\) into \(F\setminus{ \{ 0 \}}\), \(\sigma\) is a field automorphism and \(A^\sigma\) is obtained from \(A\) by applying \(\sigma\) entrywise, and \(T\) is an invertible matrix. The authors conjecture that the surjectivity hypothesis is redundant, and in fact confirm this conjecture under the additonal assumption that \(S_1\) contains all rank-one matrices (the only difference is that then \(\sigma\) is a possibly nonsurjective nonzero homomorphism). Similar results are also obtained for subsets of bounded operators acting on a real or complex Banach space, the space of Hermitian matrices acting on a finite dimensional vector space over a skew-field, and subsets of self-adjoint bounded operators acting on an infinite dimensional complex Hilbert space. Applications to various other preserver problems are also derived.