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Volume 186
No. 2

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1998

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Volume 186, No. 2, (1998), 285-313

Branka Pavlovic
Defining Metric Spaces via Operators from Unital C*-Algebras

Abstract:

For a unital C*-algebra A and an operator T with Dom(T) in A, range(T) in a normed space, and ker T = C1, we consider the metric dT on S(A), the state space of A, given by

dT(phi,psi) = sup {|phi(a)-psi(a)| : a in A and ||Ta|| <= 1},
for phi, psi in S(A). This is a generalization of the definition given by A. Connes for defining a metric on S(A) via unbounded Fredholm modules over A.

The main problem of our investigation, posed by M. Rieffel, is the relationship between thus defined metric topology TdT, and the weak-* topology Tw* on S(A). We give two different complete characterizations of those operators for which TdT = Tw*. First, we establish the relevance to this relationship of the induced one-to-one operator (T^): Dom(T)/C1 map range(T), and

B1 = { a in Dom(T): ||Ta|| <= 1 } / C1
which is the inverse image under (T^) of the unit ball of range(T). We show that:

(1) dT is bounded if and only if B1 is bounded, if and only if (T^)-1 is bounded;

(2) TdT = Tw* if and only if -B1- is compact, if and only if (T^)-1 is compact. Furthermore, we consider the de Leeuw derivation DdT associated to T, which is defined by (f(y)-f(x))/dT(x,y), x,y in S(A), and is an operator from C(S(A)) into Cb(Y),

Y = {(x,y) in S(A) \times S(A): x not = y},
whose domain is the Lipschitz algebra Lip(S(A),dT). We show that TdT = Tw* if and only if DdT is unbounded on every infinite dimensional subspace of its domain. In particular, we use all these results to characterize those unbounded Fredholm modules over A whose metric topology coincides with the weak-* topology on S(A).