A Three-Dimensional Operator System without the Smith--Ward Property

Harris recently showed that a non-liftable injective representation into the Calkin algebra gives explicit four-dimensional operator systems in the Calkin algebra without the lifting property, and hence a counterexamples to the generalized Smith--Ward problem for four-dimensional operator systems. The main obstruction also appears in an earlier work by Paulsen on this problem. We isolate the relevant part of this argument and replace the four-dimensional operator system by a three-dimensional hyperrigid operator system inside a matrix amplification of $$C_r^*(\F_2).$$ The resulting Calkin subsystem is of the form span$\{1,q(D),q(K)\}$, where $D$ and $K$ are selfadjoint operators, and the identity map on this operator system has no unital completely positive lift. Equivalently, the operator $D+iK$ gives a counterexample to the Smith--Ward problem. By a result of Kavruk, this operator system fails to be exact, and hence is also the first example of a three-dimensional operator system that is not exact.