English

Lie ideals in properly infinite C*-algebras

Operator Algebras 2025-06-16 v2 Rings and Algebras

Abstract

We show that every Lie ideal in a unital, properly infinite C*-algebra is commutator equivalent to a unique two-sided ideal. It follows that the Lie ideal structure of such a C*-algebra is concisely encoded by its lattice of two-sided ideals. This answers a question of Robert in this setting. We obtain similar structure results for Lie ideals in unital, real rank zero C*-algebras without characters. As an application, we show that every Lie ideal in a von Neumann algebra is related to a unique two-sided ideal, which solves a problem of Bre\v{s}ar, Kissin, and Shulman.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.16087,
  title  = {Lie ideals in properly infinite C*-algebras},
  author = {Hannes Thiel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.16087},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

22 pages; minor revision; added Corollary 2.8