Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2004/iii/paper-10/3/ii/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 10 3 ii Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Suppose and put . If the left ideal were proper, it would lie in a maximal left ideal . But , so would imply . Thus , and has a left inverse with .
A left inverse alone is insufficient in a general operator algebra. Here differs from the identity by an element of . The same argument supplies a left inverse of . Then , hence . So is genuinely invertible.
Conversely, if , part (i) gives a maximal left ideal with . Maximality implies , so for some . Therefore cannot be invertible, since a proper left ideal contains no invertible element. Taking disproves the required universal invertibility. We have proved the unit criterion for the Jacobson radical in the requested form:
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