Generators of maximal left ideals in Banach algebras
Volume 212 / 2012
Abstract
In 1971, Grauert and Remmert proved that a commutative, complex, Noetherian Banach algebra is necessarily finite-dimensional. More precisely, they proved that a commutative, complex Banach algebra has finite dimension over $\mathbb C$ whenever all the closed ideals in the algebra are (algebraically) finitely generated. In 1974, Sinclair and Tullo obtained a non-commutative version of this result. In 1978, Ferreira and Tomassini improved the result of Grauert and Remmert by showing that the statement is also true if one replaces `closed ideals' by `maximal ideals in the Shilov boundary of $A$'. We give a shorter proof of this latter result, together with some extensions and related examples.
We study the following conjecture. Suppose that all maximal left ideals in a unital Banach algebra $A$ are finitely generated. Then $A$ is finite-dimensional.
