Perturbation of operator algebras

Abstract

The Banach-Stone theorem says, in the language we shall use, that if two commutative C*-algebras are isomorphic, then they are as C*-algebras. In this formulation there are two natural question: whether the theorem holds for noncommutative C*-algebras, and whether it is possible to replace isometrically isomorphic with isomorphic. A complete answer to the first question was given by Kadison in [10], and M. Cambern settled the second in the affirmative in [5]. In Section 3 we show that Cambern's result may be partially extended to noncommutative von Neumann algebras having the property P ([9, 18, 19]). When we have the result of Section 3 that a nearly isometric completely positive map of a von Neumann algebra having property P is close to a * isomorphism between the algebras, we have nearly proved that von Neumann algebras whose unit balls are close in the Hausdorff metric are unitarily equivalent by a unitary close to the identity. The only thing we have to prove then is that if q) is an isomorphism of a v o n Neumann algebra A having property P onto a v o n Neumann algebra B acting on the same Hilbert space, and 4~ satisfies, for some positive k less than one and any x in A,