ON THE -SEMISIMPLICITY OF THE -ALGEBRA ON AN ABELIAN -SEMIGROUP

Abstract

AbstractTowards an involutive analogue of a result on the semisimplicity of ${\ell }^{1} (S)$ by Hewitt and Zuckerman, we show that, given an abelian $\ast $-semigroup $S$, the commutative convolution Banach $\ast $-algebra ${\ell }^{1} (S)$ is $\ast $-semisimple if and only if Hermitian bounded semicharacters on $S$ separate the points of $S$; and we search for an intrinsic separation property on $S$ equivalent to $\ast $-semisimplicity. Very many natural involutive analogues of Hewitt and Zuckerman’s separation property are shown not to work, thereby exhibiting intricacies involved in analysis on $S$.