Involutions and trivolutions in algebras related to second duals of group algebras

Abstract

We define a trivolution on a complex algebra $A$ as a non-zero conjugate-linear, anti-homomorphism $\tau$ on $A$, which is a generalized inverse of itself, that is, $\tau^{3}=\tau$. We obtain characterizations of trivolutions and show with examples that they appear naturally on many Banach algebras, particularly those arising from group algebras. We give several results on the existence or non-existence of involutions on the dual of a topologically introverted space. We investigate conditions under which the dual of a topologically introverted space admits trivolutions.