Extending representations of Banach algebras to their biduals

Eusebio Gardella, Hannes Thiel

Published 2017-03-02Version 1

We show that a representation of a Banach algebra $A$ on a Banach space $X$ can be extended to a canonical representation of $A^{**}$ on $X$ if and only if certain orbit maps $A\to X$ are weakly compact. We apply this to study when the essential space of a representation is complemented. This provides a tool to disregard the difference between degenerate and nondegenerate representations on Banach spaces. As an application we show that a C*-algebra $A$ has an isometric representation on an $L^p$-space, for $p\in[1,\infty)\setminus\{2\}$, if and only if $A$ is commutative.