Disjointness preserving linear operators between Banach algebras of vector-valued functions

Abstract

We present vector-valued versions of two theorems due to A. Jimenez-Vargas, by showing that, if $B(X,E)$ and $B(Y,F)$ are certain vector-valued Banach algebras of continuous functions and $T:B(X,E)\to B(Y,F)$ is a separating linear operator, then $\widehat{T}:\widehat{B(X,E)}\to \widehat{B(Y,F)}$, defined by $\widehat{T}\hat{f}=\widehat{Tf}$, is a weighted composition operator, where $\widehat{Tf}$ is the Gelfand transform of $Tf$. Furthermore, it is shown that, under some conditions, every bijective separating map $T:B(X,E)\to B(Y,F)$ is biseparating and induces a homeomorphism between the character spaces $M(B(X,E))$ and $M(B(Y,F))$. In particular, a complete description of all biseparating, or disjointness preserving linear operators between certain vector-valued Lipschitz algebras is provided. In fact, under certain conditions, if the bijections $T:Lip^{\alpha}(X,E)\to Lip^{\alpha}(Y,F)$ and $T^{-1}$ are both disjointness preserving, then $T$ is a weighted composition operator in the form $Tf(y)=h(y)(f(\phi(y))),$ where $\phi$ is a homeomorphism from $Y$ onto $X$ and $h$ is a map from $Y$ into the set of all linear bijections from $E$ onto $F$. Moreover, if $T$ is multiplicative then $M(E)$ and $M(F)$ are homeomorphic.