Function Spaces and Nonsymmetric Norm Preserving Maps

Abstract

Let $X,Y$ be compact Hausdorff spaces and $A,B$ be either closed subspaces of $C(X)$ and $C(Y)$, respectively, containing constants or positive cones of such subspaces. In this paper we study surjections $T:A \longrightarrow B$ satisfying the norm condition $\|T(f) T(g) -1 \|_Y=\|fg-1\|_X$ for all $f,g \in A$, where $\|\cdot\|_X$ and $\|\cdot\|_Y$ denote the supremum norms. We show that under a mild condition on the strong boundary points of $A$ and $B$ (and the assumption $T(i)=i T(1)$ in the subspace case), the map $T$ is a weighted composition operator on the set of strong boundary points of $B$. This result is an improvement of the known results for uniform algebra case to closed linear subspaces and their positive cones.