Molnar
Molnar
Molnar
angles
Lajos Molnár
Let H be a (real or complex) Hilbert space and denote B(H) the algebra of all
bounded linear operators on H. By a projection we mean a self-adjoint idempo-
tent in B(H). For any n ∈ N, Pn (H) denotes the set of all rank-n projections
on H, and P∞ (H) stands for the set of all infinite rank projections. Clearly,
Pn (H) can be identified with the set of all n-dimensional subspaces of H. As it
was mentioned in the abstract, Wigner’s theorem describes the bijective trans-
2 L. Molnár
φ(P ) = V P V ∗ (P ∈ Pn (H)).
φ(P ) = U P U ∗ (P ∈ P∞ (H)).
As one can suspect from the formulation of our main result, there is a system
of exceptional cases, namely, when we have dim H = 2n, n > 1. In the next
section we show that in those cases there do exist transformations on Pn (H)
which preserve the principal angles but cannot be written in the form appearing
in our main theorem above.
2. Proof
This section is devoted to the proof of our main theorem. In fact, this will follow
from the statements below.
The idea of the proof can be summarized in a single sentence as follows. We
extend our transformation from Pn (H) to a Jordan homomorphism of the algebra
4 L. Molnár
F (H) of all finite rank operators on H which preserves the rank-1 operators.
Fortunately, those maps turn to have a form and using this we can achieve the
desired conclusion. On the other hand, quite unfortunately, we have to work
hard to carry out all the details of the proof that we are just going to begin.
From now on, let H be a real or complex Hilbert space and let n ∈ N. Since our
statement obviously holds when dim H = n, hence we suppose that dim H > n.
In the sequel, let tr be the usual trace functional on operators. The ideal of
all finite rank operators in B(H) is denoted by F (H). Clearly, every element of
F (H) has a finite trace. We denote by Fs (H) the set of all self-adjoint elements
of F (H).
We begin with two key lemmas. In order to understand why we consider the
property (1) in Lemma 1, we note that if ∠(P, Q) = ∠(P ′ , Q′ ) for some finite
rank projections P, Q, P ′ , Q′ , then, by definition, the positive operators QP Q
and Q′ P ′ Q′ are unitarily equivalent. This implies that tr QP Q = tr Q′ P ′ Q′ .
But, by the properties of the trace, we have tr QP Q = tr P QQ = tr P Q and,
similarly, tr Q′ P ′ Q′ = tr P ′ Q′ . So, if our transformation preserves the principal
angles between projections, then it necessarily preserves the trace of the product
of the projections in question. This justifies the condition (1) in the next lemma.
then φ has a unique real-linear extension Φ onto the real-linear span spanR P of
P. The transformation Φ is injective, preserves the trace and satisfies
X X
Φ( λi Pi ) = λi φ(Pi ).
i i
Preserving principal angles between subspaces of a Hilbert space 5
P P
We have to show that Φ is well-defined. If i λi Pi = k µk Qk , where {µk } ⊂ R
and {Qk } ⊂ P are finite subsets, then for any R ∈ P we compute
X X X
tr( λi φ(Pi )φ(R)) = λi tr(φ(Pi )φ(R)) = λi tr(Pi R) =
i i i
X X X
tr( λi Pi R) = tr( µk Qk R) = µk tr(Qk R) =
i k k
X X
µk tr(φ(Qk )φ(R)) = tr( µk φ(Qk )φ(R)).
k k
Therefore, we have
X X
tr(( λi φ(Pi ) − µk φ(Qk ))φ(R)) = 0
i k
for every R ∈ P. By the linearity of the trace functional it follows that we have
similar equality if we replace φ(R) by any finite linear combination of φ(R)’s.
This gives us that
X X X X
tr(( λi φ(Pi ) − µk φ(Qk ))( λi φ(Pi ) − µk φ(Qk ))) = 0.
i k i k
P P
The operator ( i λi φ(Pi ) − k µk φ(Qk ))2 , being the square of a self-adjoint
operator, is positive. Since its trace is zero, we obtain that
X X
( λi φ(Pi ) − µk φ(Qk ))2 = 0
i k
X X
λi φ(Pi ) − µk φ(Qk ) = 0.
i k
This shows that Φ is well-defined. The real-linearity of Φ now follows from the
definition. The uniqueness of Φ is also trivial to see. From (1) we immediately
obtain (2). One can introduce an inner product on Fs (H) by the formula
(the norm induced by this inner product is called the Hilbert-Schmidt norm).
The equality (2) shows that Φ is an isometry with respect to this norm. Thus,
Φ is injective. It follows from (1) that
tr φ(P ) = tr φ(P )2 = tr P 2 = tr P (P ∈ P)
or, equivalently, if
Φ(A) = V AV ∗ (A ∈ Fs (H)).
Preserving principal angles between subspaces of a Hilbert space 7
Proof. Since every finite-rank projection is the finite sum of pairwise orthogonal
rank-1 projections, it is obvious that Φ preserves the finite-rank projections.
It follows from [2, Remark 2.2] and the spectral theorem that Φ is a Jordan
homomorphism (we note that [2, Remark 2.2] is about self-adjoint operators on
finite dimensional complex Hilbert spaces, but the same argument applies for
Fs (H) even if it is infinite dimensional and/or real).
We next prove that Φ can be extended to a Jordan homomorphism of F (H).
To see this, first suppose that H is complex and consider the transformation
Φ̃ : F (H) → F (H) defined by
As F (H) is a locally matrix ring (every finite subset of F (H) can be included
in a subalgebra of F (H) which is isomorphic to a full matrix algebra), it follows
from a classical result of Jacobson and Rickart [6, Theorem 8] that Φ can be
written as Φ = Φ1 + Φ2 , where Φ1 is a homomorphism and Φ2 is an antihomo-
morphism. Let P be a rank-1 projection on H. Since Φ(P ) is also rank-1, we
obtain that one of the idempotents Φ1 (P ), Φ2 (P ) is zero. Since F (H) is a simple
ring, it is easy to see that this implies that either Φ1 or Φ2 is identically zero,
that is, Φ is either a homomorphism or an antihomomorphism of F (H). In what
follows we can assume without loss of generality that Φ is a homomorphism.
Since the kernel of Φ is an ideal in F (H) and F (H) is simple, we obtain that Φ
is injective.
This gives us that hT u, Syi = hu, yi for every u, y ∈ H. On the other hand, since
Φ sends rank-1 projections to rank-1 projections, we obtain that for every unit
vector x ∈ H we have T x = Sx. These imply that T = S is an isometry and
with the notation V = T = S we have
Φ(A) = V AV ∗
S ′ v = hS ′ v, T ′ xihT ′ x, T ′ uiS ′ y
φ(P ) = V P V ∗ (P ∈ P1 (H)).
Proof. By the spectral theorem it is obvious that the real linear span of P1 (H)
is Fs (H). Then, by Lemma 1 we see that there is a unique real-linear extension
Φ of φ onto Fs (H) which preserves the rank-1 projections and, by (5), Φ also
preserves the orthogonality between the elements of P1 (H). Lemma 2 applies to
complete the proof. ⊓
⊔
As for the cases when n > 1 we need the following lemma. Recall that we
have previously supposed that dim H > n.
Proof. Since the real-linear span of P1 (H) is Fs (H), it is sufficient to show that
every rank-1 projection is a real-linear combination of rank-n projections. To
see this, choose orthonormal vectors e1 , . . . , en+1 in H. Let E = e1 ⊗ e1 + . . . +
en+1 ⊗ en+1 and define
Pk = E − ek ⊗ ek (k = 1, . . . , n + 1).
λ1 P1 + . . . + λn+1 Pn+1 = e1 ⊗ e1
P R = RP = R, QR = RQ = R
we deduce
(Q − R)(P − R)(Q − R) =
QP Q − QP R − QRQ + QR − RP Q + RP R + RQ − R = (6)
R − R − R + R − R + R + R − R = 0.
We next prove the assertion of our main theorem in the case when 1 < n ∈ N
and H is infinite dimensional.
12 L. Molnár
φ(P ) = V P V ∗ (P ∈ Pn (H)).
Pk = E − ek ⊗ ek (k = 1, . . . , n + 1).
We show that the ranges of all Pk′ = φ(Pk )’s can be jointly included in an
(n + 1)-dimensional subspace of H. To see this, we first recall that Φ has the
property that
(see Lemma 1). Next we have the following property of Φ: if P, Q are orthogonal
rank-1 projections, then Φ(P )Φ(Q) = 0. Indeed, if P, Q are orthogonal, then we
can include them into two orthogonal rank-(n + 1) projections. Now, referring to
the construction given in Lemma 4 and having in mind that Φ preserves the or-
thogonality between rank-n projections, we obtain that Φ(P )Φ(Q) = 0. (Clearly,
the same argument works if dim H ≥ 2(n + 1).) Since the rank-n projections Pk
are commuting, by the preserving property of φ and Lemma 5, it follows that
the projections Φ(Pk ) are also commuting. It is well-known that any finite com-
muting family of operators in Fs (H) can be diagonalized by the same unitary
transformation (or, in the real case, by the same orthogonal transformation).
Therefore, if we resctrict Φ onto the real-linear subspace in Fs (H) generated by
Preserving principal angles between subspaces of a Hilbert space 13
In that way we can reduce the problem to the previous case. So, there is an
either unitary or antiunitary operator U on H such that
We now show that the case when 1 < n ∈ N, n = dim H/2 is really ex-
ceptional. To see this, consider the transformation φ : P 7→ I − P on Pn (H).
This maps Pn (H) into itself and preserves the principal angles. As for the com-
plex case, the preserving property follows from [1, Exercise VII.1.11] while in
the real case it was proved already by Jordan in [3] (see [14], p. 310). Let us
now suppose that the transformation φ can be written in the form (7). Pick a
rank-1 projection Q on H. We know that it is a real linear combination of some
P1 , . . . , Pn+1 ∈ Pn (H). It would follow from (7) that considering the same linear
combination of φ(P1 ), . . . , φ(Pn+1 ), it is a rank-1 projection as well. But due to
the definition of φ, we get that this linear combination is a constant minus Q. By
the trace preserving property we obtain that this constant is 1/n. Since n > 1,
the operator (1/n)I −Q is obviously not a projection. Therefore, we have arrived
at a contradiction. This shows that the transformation above can not be written
in the form (7).
It would be a nice result if one could prove that in the present case (i.e., when
1 < n, n = dim H/2) up to unitary-antiunitary equivalence, there are exactly
two transformations on Pn (H) preserving principal angles, namely, P 7→ P and
P 7→ I − P . This is left as an open problem.
φ(P ) = U P U ∗ (P ∈ P∞ (H)).
W (−Q0 − P0 + P0 Q0 + Q0 P0 − Q0 P0 Q0 )W ∗ =
Taking traces, by the equality of the rank of P0 and P0′ , we obtain that
tr P0 Q0 = tr P0′ Q0 . (9)
Since this holds for every finite rank projection Q0 on H, it follows that P0 = P0′
and hence we have P = P ′ . This proves the injectivity of φ.
Let P ∈ P∞ (H) be of infinite corank. Then there is a projection Q ∈ P∞ (H)
such that Q ⊥ P . By the preserving property of φ, this implies that φ(Q) ⊥ φ(P )
which means that φ(P ) is of infinite corank. One can similarly prove that if φ(P )
is of infinite corank, then the same must hold for P . This yields that P ∈ P∞ (H)
is of finite corank if and only if so is φ(P ).
Denote by Pf (H) the set of all finite rank projections on H. It follows that
the transformation ψ : Pf (H) → Pf (H) defined by
This can be done following the argument leading to (9). In fact, by the preserving
property of φ there is a unitary operator W on H such that
−Q − P + P Q + QP − QP Q.
Taking traces on both sides and referring to the rank preserving property of
ψ, we obtain (10). According to Lemma 1, let Ψ : Fs (H) → Fs (H) denote the
unique real-linear extension of ψ onto spanR Pf (H) = Fs (H). We know that Ψ
is injective. Since Pf (H) is in the range of Ψ , we obtain that Ψ is surjective as
well. It is easy to see that Lemma 2 can be applied and we infer that there exists
an either unitary or antiunitary operator U on H such that
Ψ (A) = U AU ∗ (A ∈ Fs (H)).
Therefore, we have
φ(P ) = U P U ∗
for every projection P ∈ P∞ (H) with finite corank. It remains to prove that the
same holds true for every P ∈ P∞ (H) with infinite corank as well. This could be
quite easy to show if we know that φ preserves the order between the elements
of P∞ (H). But this property is far away from being easy to verify. So we choose
a different approach to attack the problem.
Let P ∈ P∞ (H) be a projection of infinite corank. By the preserving property
of φ we see that for every Q ∈ P∞ (H) the operator φ(Q)φ(P )φ(Q) is a projection
if and if QP Q is a projection. By Lemma 5, this means that φ(Q) commutes
with φ(P ) if and only if Q commutes with P . Therefore, for any Q ∈ P∞ (H) of
finite corank, we obtain that Q commutes with U ∗ φ(P )U (this is equivalent to
that φ(Q) = U QU ∗ commutes with φ(P )) if and only if Q commutes with P .
By Lemma 8 we have two possibilities, namely, either U ∗ φ(P )U = P or
U ∗ φ(P )U = I − P . Suppose that U ∗ φ(P )U = I − P . Consider a complete
orthonormal basis e0 , eγ (γ ∈ Γ ) in the range of P and, similarly, choose a
Preserving principal angles between subspaces of a Hilbert space 19
Clearly, Q is of finite corank (in fact, its corank is 1). Since φ(Q)φ(P )φ(Q) =
U QU ∗ φ(P )U QU ∗ is unitarily equivalent to QP Q, it follows that the spectrum of
QU ∗ φ(P )U Q is equal to the spectrum of QP Q. This gives us that the spectrum
of Q(I − P )Q is equal to the spectrum of QP Q. By the construction of Q this
means that
Acknowledgements. This research was supported from the following sources: (1) Hungarian
National Foundation for Scientific Research (OTKA), Grant No. T030082, T031995, (2) A
grant from the Ministry of Education, Hungary, Reg. No. FKFP 0349/2000.
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Communicated by H. Araki