CONTINUITY OF HOMOMORPHISMS BETWEEN BANACH ALGEBRAS

The problems of the continuity of homomorphisms between Banach algebras have been studied widely for the last two decades to obtain various fruitful results, yet it is far from characterizing the calss of Banach algebras for which each homomorphism from a member of the class into a Banach algebra is conitnuous. For commutative Banach algebras A and B a simple proof shows that every homomorphism .theta. from A into B is continuous provided that B is semi-simple, however, with a non semi-simple Banach algebra B examples of discontinuous homomorphisms from C(K) into B have been constructed by Dales [6] and Esterle [7]. For non commutative Banach algebras the problems of automatic continuity of homomorphisms seem to be much more difficult. Many positive results and open questions related to this subject may be found in [1], [3], [5] and [8], in particular most recent development can be found in the Lecture Note which contains [1]. It is well-known that a$^{*}$-isomorphism from a $C^{*}$-algebra into another $C^{*}$-algebra is an isometry, and an isomorphism of a Banach algebra into a $C^{*}$-algebra with self-adjoint range is continuous. But a$^{*}$-isomorphism from a $C^{*}$-algebra into an involutive Banach algebra is norm increasing [9], and one can not expect each of such isomorphisms to be continuous. In this note we discuss an isomorphism from a commutative $C^{*}$-algebra into a commutative Banach algebra with dense range via separating space. It is shown that such an isomorphism .theta. : A.rarw.B is conitnuous and maps A onto B is B is semi-simple, discontinuous if B is not semi-simple.