The set of all bounded linear idempotent operators on a Banach space X is a poset with the partial order defined by P ≤ Q if PQ = QP = P. Another natural relation on the set of idempotent operators is the orthogonality relation defined by P ⊥ Q ⇔ PQ = QP = 0. We briefly survey known theorems on maps on idempotents preserving order or orthogonality. We discuss some related results and open problems. The connections with physics, geometry, theory of automorphisms, and linear preserver problems will...

Let X be an infinite-dimensional real or complex Banach space, B(X) the algebra of all bounded linear operators on X, and P(X) ⊂ B(X) the subset of all idempotents. We characterize bijective maps on P(X) preserving commutativity in both directions. This unifies and extends the characterizations of two types of automorphisms of P(X), with respect to the orthogonality relation and with respect to the usual partial order; the latter have been previously characterized by Ovchinnikov. We also describe...

We characterize surjective nonlinear maps Φ between unital C*-algebras 𝒜 and ℬ that satisfy w(Φ(A)-Φ(B))) = w(A-B) for all A,B ∈ 𝒜 under a mild condition that Φ(I) - Φ(0) belongs to the center of ℬ, where w(A) is the numerical radius of A and I is the unit of 𝒜.

Let be a complex, separable Hilbert space of finite or infinite dimension, and let ℬ() be the algebra of all bounded operators on . It is shown that if φ: ℬ() → ℬ() is a multiplicative map(not assumed linear) and if φ is sufficiently close to a linear automorphism of ℬ() in some uniform sense, then it is actually an automorphism; as such, there is an invertible operator S in ℬ() such that $\phi \left(A\right)=S^{-1}AS$ for all A in ℬ(). When is finite-dimensional, similar results are obtained with the mere assumption that there...