A central simple algebra over is a finite-dimensional associative -algebra with no nonzero proper two-sided ideals and with center . The Artin–Wedderburn theorem writes it uniquely as with a central division algebra. After a finite separable splitting field extension it becomes , so its dimension is , and is its degree of a central simple algebra. Passing from to a matrix algebra over does not change its Brauer class.
The Brauer group consists of these classes, with product induced by tensor product. Extending to a common splitting field shows that a tensor product of central simple algebras is again central simple; its two-sided ideals and center descend from the corresponding full matrix algebra. The neutral class is , and the inverse of is , because
The displayed map becomes the standard isomorphism for matrices over a splitting field, so it is already an isomorphism over . Thus Brauer classes measure precisely the obstruction to being a split matrix algebra.
An explicit family is supplied by cyclic algebras. Let be cyclic of degree , with generator , and let . Define
This is an associative algebra: form the skew polynomial ring with relation and quotient by the central relation . Reduction of powers gives the displayed -dimensional -basis. An element commuting with every has no coefficient for , since is not the identity. Commuting also with forces the remaining coefficient into . Hence the center is .
Here is an explicit splitting construction. On , with basis , put
Then and . After extending scalars to , the separable decomposition supplies all diagonal matrices, and their products with powers of supply all matrix units. Therefore
Any nonzero proper two-sided ideal of would extend to one of , which is impossible. Thus this construction really gives a central simple algebra, with splitting field .
Its central arithmetic feature is the splitting criterion for a cyclic algebra:
If , let act by multiplication on the -vector space , and let act as . Its nth power is multiplication by , so this gives a representation . It is injective by simplicity and an isomorphism by equal dimension. Conversely, if with , its embedded field makes one-dimensional over . The relation for says that is -semilinear. In an -basis it must have the form , whose nth power is . The relation forces .
More generally the crossed-product algebra of a Galois extension attaches an algebra to a multiplicative two-cocycle. Changing the cocycle by a coboundary rescales its basis and preserves the Brauer class. Descent of a split matrix algebra identifies
For cyclic , cyclic Tate cohomology identifies this second cohomology group with . In a crossed product, rescale successive cyclic basis elements to powers of a single ; the remaining datum is , changed by a field norm when is rescaled. This explains why cyclic algebras give every class split by a cyclic extension, and why multiplication of their parameters is addition of their Brauer classes.
For a finite field , every finite splitting field is cyclic over . The field norm is the power map on its cyclic multiplicative group, and is onto . Thus every relative Brauer class is zero, and every central simple algebra has zero class:
For a non-Archimedean local field , the valuation classification of central division algebras shows that every Brauer class splits over a finite unramified extension. For the degree- unramified extension with arithmetic Frobenius , units are norms and norm valuations are multiples of . Hence the cyclic relative Brauer group is , represented by . The compatible local Brauer invariant is
The union over all gives
A class with invariant in lowest terms has a central division algebra representative of degree of a central simple algebra . This is the local valuation classification used above; the explicit cyclic algebras exhibit all of its invariants. At the Archimedean places, , while : its nontrivial class is the quaternion algebra , since complex norms are positive.
For a number field, the Albert-Brauer-Hasse-Noether theorem describes the Brauer group by the exact sequence
Thus its classes are exactly finite-support families of local invariants with sum zero; real invariants are or and complex invariants are zero. Every global Brauer class has a cyclic splitting extension, so cyclic algebras also realize all global classes. If , their local invariants are , with restricted to the local decomposition subgroup. The sum-zero relation for a principal parameter is the invariant form of Artin reciprocity. Injectivity supplies the local-to-global splitting test, which yields the Hasse norm theorem for cyclic extensions as explained in the preceding solution. Here the local valuation classification and the global invariant theorem are the structural theorems used to describe the Brauer groups; the construction and norm-splitting calculation have been proved explicitly.
A modulus of a number field is , with a nonzero integral ideal and a subset of the real places. Let be the group of fractional ideals prime to , and let consist of principal ideals with at each prime power in and at each selected real place. The ray class group is
The ray class field is the finite abelian extension for which the Artin map has kernel and induces an isomorphism . Equivalently it is the maximal abelian extension whose conductor divides .
To compute its order use the ray class exact sequence, including signatures:
The middle map lifts a residue and sign tuple to an element of by weak approximation theorem, then takes its principal ideal as a ray class. Different lifts differ by a principal ray factor. Its kernel consists exactly of tuples represented by global units. Every ordinary ideal class has a representative prime to the finite modulus, again by weak approximation theorem; this gives surjectivity of the last map. If denotes the ray units, the kernel of the unit map is . The Chinese remainder theorem and counting units in each prime-power quotient give the ray class number formula
First take . Its ring of integers is , where and . The Minkowski bound for ideal classes is , so every ideal class has a representative of norm one and . Its units are the six roots of unity. Modulo seven, the polynomial has distinct roots , and therefore
The unit group of this quotient has order . The unit maps to , which has order six; consequently unit reduction is injective and . The ray class number formula gives .
We also identify the quotient explicitly. Conjugation interchanges the two factors, so the residue norm is . Its kernel has order six and equals the image of the six units, since . Hence
The field has degree six over , since the degrees over are twelve and two. It is unramified outside seven by the cyclotomic computation and the base-change argument above. At primes over seven, has completion , and is the tame degree-six cyclotomic extension; its conductor exponent is one. Its relative arithmetic Artin symbol at an ideal prime to seven acts by
If with , then . Thus the Artin map kills the principal ray subgroup. It factors through the order-six ray class group; the residue norm quotient computed above shows that it is onto the degree-six Galois group, so the fields coincide. This proves the explicit ray class field of Q of square root minus three modulo seven:
Now take , and write . Its ring of integers is , its discriminant is , and its units are . The quotient by is
whose two units are both images of . The ray class exact sequence therefore gives .
For its class number, the Minkowski bound for ideal classes is , so each ideal class contains an integral ideal of norm at most three. The primes of norms two and three are
These are the only nontrivial possibilities within the bound, and their ideal classes coincide and have order at most two. The ideal is not principal: its being principal would give an integer solution to , which is impossible. Thus , the ideal class group is , and the ray field is the Hilbert class field.
We verify its actual identity rather than stopping at the degree. Put
The two quadratic fields and are distinct, so and . The integral elements are a rational basis. Their trace matrix is the Kronecker product of the two quadratic trace matrices, with discriminants and . Its determinant is therefore . The discriminant-index formula for an integral lattice shows that the field discriminant divides . On the other hand the relative discriminant ideal formula gives
The norm on the right is a positive integer, so equality is forced. Thus the relative discriminant ideal is the unit ideal, and is unramified at every finite prime. There are no real places of . The extension is quadratic and therefore Abelian; its degree equals , identifying it with the Hilbert class field of Q of square root minus six. Hence the ray class field of Q of square root minus six modulo square root minus six is
Take the Hadamard gate to be and the phase gate to be . This fixes the sign convention for the interference phase.
For the coherent quantum circuit, the successive quantum states are
The Born rule therefore gives the concise answer
With the stated quantum decoherence after the phase gate, the joint pure state before the last Hadamard gate is
After that Hadamard gate, its environment coefficient at output zero is . Squaring its norm sums over every unobserved environment outcome, so
The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality gives . In this single-qubit interference with conditional environment states, is the interference visibility: orthogonal environment states erase the fringe, while a unit-modulus overlap shifts its phase without reducing visibility. The plus sign in follows from the specified overlap , rather than its complex conjugate.
If the same quantum decoherence occurs before the phase gate, the joint pure state is first . The phase gate then produces exactly the same state used above. Equivalently, the controlled environment interaction commutes with the diagonal phase gate. The probability is unchanged.
For the Deutsch algorithm, use the reversible Boolean quantum oracle
The algebraic oracle map printed in the source has its arguments misplaced: taken literally, it sends two distinct answer inputs to the same output for constant , so it cannot be a unitary operator. The corrected map above agrees with the diagram's input-control, answer-target arrangement. Put the answer qubit in . Since the Pauli X gate satisfies , quantum phase kickback gives
Write . Up to the irrelevant global phase , the input qubit acquires relative phase , so its ideal final computational-basis measurement returns : zero for a constant function and one for a balanced function.
Let the specified quantum decoherence occur in the interference portion between the two Hadamard gates. It commutes with the oracle's effective diagonal phase on the input, so the same analysis applies whether it occurs just before or just after the query. The two likelihoods are
Thus the diagram's usual zero-for-constant decision rule has
This is the reliability for either promised class separately, with no prior needed. For equally likely classes, if is known to be negative, reversing the interpretation gives . A known environment phase can instead be compensated by the phase gate before the final Hadamard gate, giving success probability . In particular, gives no information and permits certainty after phase compensation. These refinements distinguish a shifted fringe from lost quantum coherence; with the unmodified diagram a phase shift alone can reverse the apparent answer. Quantum decoherence after the final Hadamard gate leaves its computational populations unchanged, so that different placement would not spoil the measured answer.
Write both the input and output integer labels in most-significant-bit-first order, and . Factoring the Fourier phase over the bits of gives the product decomposition of a Fourier phase state:
Here denotes the binary fraction ; the integer part of does not affect the phase.
Build a dyadic quantum Fourier transform circuit as follows. Process wires in that order. First apply a Hadamard gate to wire . Then, for each , apply the controlled phase gate with control wire and target wire . On a computational-basis state, every unprocessed control is still the bit , so wire becomes
Once a wire has been processed it is not touched by later stages. Reversing the order of the output wires gives exactly the Fourier product above. Agreement on every computational-basis state proves agreement as linear operators on all superpositions, even though the intermediate operation on a general input can create entanglement.
There are Hadamard gates and controlled phase gates. Output reversal may be treated as wire relabelling. If it must instead be implemented physically while using only the requested gate family, use swap operators. Each swap is three controlled-NOT gates, and
Thus the swaps use only Hadamard gates and Controlled-Z gates, which are controlled gates. An exact physical network has
elementary gates from the stated family. This implements the positive-exponent Fourier transform with the correct output order in quadratic size. Omitting the output reversal without relabelling the wires would produce the reversed-order transform instead.
For the perturbation bound, the operator norm in the source is equivalently . It satisfies the triangle inequality, is unchanged by left or right multiplication by a unitary operator, and a unitary operator has norm one. The exact telescoping identity is
It follows by replacing one factor at a time; alternatively all intermediate products cancel in the sum. Taking the operator norm and using unitary invariance gives the quantum circuit gate-error telescoping bound
The original PDF assumes strict , so its strict conclusion is justified. If the hypothesis were weakened to a non-strict inequality, the conclusion would likewise be . The TeX aid misreads this hypothesis; the PDF resolves it.
Apply the non-strict version to each approximate unitary gate in the Fourier network. Extending a gate by the identity on other wires leaves its operator norm error unchanged. Including the physical swap decompositions, all gates are of the required type and can obey the stated accuracy. Hence
With exact output relabelling rather than physical swaps the numerator is just . The proof retains gate phases and makes no assumption of cancellation between coherent errors.
For every normalized input the output-state norm error is at most this same bound. If is any positive operator satisfying , the change in its measurement in quantum mechanics outcome probability is at most , where : expand the difference of the two expectations into two terms, each bounded by using the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Thus inverse-polynomial gate accuracy gives an inverse-polynomial total error, rather than requiring exponential precision in the number of qubits. For the phase gates this corresponds to specifying angles with bits of precision, since . This is a robustness statement for unitary gate approximations; it does not by itself correct quantum decoherence, correlated stochastic faults, or limitations of hardware connectivity.
Put . The hypothesis scales to every residual : if , apply it to and multiply the resulting vector by to obtain an approximate preimage of norm at most with error at most . For , choose zero.
Start with . Inductively choose so that
Then and . Completeness of the Banach space gives . Boundedness of gives
Thus
This geometric correction for approximate surjectivity uses no completeness assumption on : every infinite sum was formed in .
To establish the completeness forced by uniformly bounded lifting, let be a Cauchy sequence in . Choose a subsequence with . Lift to and each difference to with and . The series converges in , and its image under is the limit of the subsequence. The original Cauchy sequence has that same limit, by the triangle inequality. Hence is complete.
The open mapping theorem states that a bounded surjective linear map between Banach spaces is open. In particular, a bounded linear bijection has a bounded inverse. This is the theorem the question permits us to state without proof.
For the closed graph theorem, suppose is everywhere-defined and linear with closed graph . The product norm makes a Banach space, so its closed subspace is complete. Projection , , is a bounded linear bijection. Its inverse is bounded by the open mapping theorem; therefore
It follows that is bounded, proving the closed graph theorem rather than assuming it.
For the final clause, is the separating space of a linear map. It contains zero, and if , and , , then and its image tends to . Thus is a vector subspace. If and , choose one vector from a witnessing sequence for with
Then and , so : it is closed. If is continuous, every defining image limit is zero, hence . Conversely, if and , , then and , so . The graph is sequentially closed and therefore closed in the normed, metrizable product. The proved closed graph theorem now gives continuity. Consequently
The original PDF places in ; the TeX's first reference to a subset of is a transcription error.
An extreme point of a convex set is one for which , and imply . It is enough to test midpoint decompositions: a nontrivial interior point of a segment is itself the midpoint of a shorter nontrivial segment contained in that segment.
We prove the Krein-Milman theorem. Assume first that is nonempty. A face of a convex set means a convex subset with the property that whenever an interior point of a segment in belongs to , both endpoints belong to . The family of nonempty compact faces of , including itself, has a minimal member by the Zorn lemma: every inclusion-decreasing chain has a nonempty intersection by compactness and the finite intersection property, and that intersection is again a compact face.
Let be such a minimal face. If it contains two distinct points, the continuous dual of a Hausdorff locally convex space separates them, by the permitted Hahn-Banach theorem. Choose a continuous real linear functional that is not constant on . It attains a maximum on the compact set , and
is a nonempty proper compact face of , and hence a face of . Indeed, equality at the maximum in a convex combination forces both endpoint values to be maximal. This contradicts minimality. Thus is a singleton, and its point is extreme in . The same argument applied within any nonempty compact face proves that every such face contains an extreme point of .
Let . It is contained in , since the latter is closed and convex, and extreme points exist when is nonempty. If , the permitted separation theorem provides a continuous real linear functional with . Let be its maximizer face on . This nonempty compact face contains an extreme point of , but
contradicting . Therefore
For empty , the equality holds with the usual empty convex-hull convention. This proves both the extreme-point existence step and the closed-convex-hull step; no compactness of the set of extreme points itself is assumed.
The real absolutely summable sequence space is with norm . The real l-infinity sequence space is with norm . Their completeness is allowed as given; their extreme points still require proof.
For , an interior point of the unit ball is not extreme because small opposite perturbations in one coordinate stay in the ball. At a boundary point with two nonzero coordinates , choose and put
The two distinct vectors both have norm one and average to , so is not extreme. A remaining boundary point must be . If with , the th coordinate forces , exhausting both norm budgets and forcing all other coordinates to zero. The negative case is identical. Thus
For , if in even one coordinate, small opposite changes to that coordinate give a nontrivial midpoint decomposition within the ball. If every , a midpoint decomposition forces both summands to have that same value in every coordinate, so they equal . Hence
These are precisely the extreme points of real sequence-space unit balls for the two spaces under consideration.
For a nonzero complex unital Banach algebra, define
This is the spectrum of an element; its complement carries the resolvent of an element .
If , the Neumann series
converges in . Multiplication of finite partial sums followed by a norm limit gives both inverse identities. Thus the spectrum is bounded by . The invertible set is open by the allowed assumption, and is continuous, so the spectrum is closed. It is therefore compact if nonempty.
To prove nonemptiness, suppose the resolvent exists for every . At a fixed , the same series applied locally gives
for , proving norm analyticity. Every bounded complex linear functional therefore gives an entire scalar function . On compact disks it is bounded by continuity of inversion, and the large- series gives
Here the factor handles an algebra norm whose identity was not normalized to one. The Liouville theorem forces each scalar function to be identically zero. The Hahn-Banach theorem separates points of , so , contradicting . Hence
This includes an explicit proof of the nonemptiness of the Banach-algebra spectrum rather than using it as a named result.
For the algebra of entire functions, choose the compact-disk algebra norm on entire functions
It is finite by continuity on a compact disk, satisfies the norm axioms, and is submultiplicative. If the norm is zero, vanishes on the open disk, so the identity theorem gives on the plane. Thus it is an actual algebra norm, not merely a seminorm.
No complete algebra norm is possible. For the coordinate function , the function has a zero at for every complex and hence cannot have a multiplicative inverse among entire functions. Thus its algebraic spectrum is all of , independently of any chosen norm. Were an algebra norm complete, the spectral theorem just proved would make that spectrum bounded, a contradiction. Therefore entire functions admit an algebra norm but no complete algebra norm. This distinguishes failure of every complete algebra norm from failure of just the displayed disk norm.
For continuous functions on the plane, construct disjoint plateaux explicitly. Let
The supports of lie in the disks , so they are pairwise disjoint and form a locally finite family. Thus is continuous. On the support where is nonzero, and all other bumps vanish, giving ; also , so no is zero. If an algebra norm existed, submultiplicativity would imply
so for every positive integer, impossible. Consequently the algebra of all continuous functions on the plane admits no algebra norm, with no completeness hypothesis needed.
A C-star algebra is a complex Banach algebra with an antilinear algebra involution satisfying , and the C-star identity . First take a nonzero unital algebra. Its identity has norm one, since . Also
and exchanging proves . Thus the algebra involution is continuous. An element is a Hermitian C-star element, and an element satisfying is a normal C-star element.
We establish the spectral facts needed for the representation, to avoid assuming the conclusion. For a Hermitian C-star element , the Banach algebra exponential is unitary: taking adjoints of its absolutely convergent series gives , and multiplication gives . Hence . If , then . Indeed, the entire factorization
can be evaluated by its convergent power series at . If the resulting product were invertible, its commuting factors would make invertible, a contradiction. The spectral bound therefore gives for every real . Both signs of force . Thus Hermitian elements have real spectrum.
For completeness, the spectral radius formula needed below follows from the same resolvent theory. Submultiplicativity gives
For the existence of the limit, write with and bound ; this bounds the upper limit by every th root, while the infimum bounds the lower limit. If a power vanishes, the conclusion follows directly. For , the resolvent series converges by the root test, so . Conversely, for any , contour integration of the resolvent gives
At a larger circle this follows by termwise integration of the Neumann series; deformation to radius is justified by norm analyticity and scalar Cauchy theory as in Question 4. Therefore , so . Letting proves .
For a normal C-star element , its adjoint commutes with it. The C-star identity gives
where the middle norm equality uses the identity for the Hermitian element . Every power is again normal, so . The spectral-radius formula yields
This derives the spectral radius norm equality for normal elements from the axioms.
Now let be commutative and unital. Its character space of an algebra is compact Hausdorff in the weak-star topology. Every algebra character has norm at most one by the argument in Question 4, and this space is the weak-star closed subset of the dual unit ball defined by and . Compactness follows from the Banach-Alaoglu theorem; weak-star separation makes it Hausdorff.
We also need the full character-spectrum correspondence, not just one inclusion. Every proper ideal is contained in a maximal ideal. Such a maximal ideal is closed: if its closure contained one, it would contain an element within norm distance less than one of the identity, which is invertible by the Neumann series, contradicting properness. Its closure is therefore proper and maximality gives equality. The quotient is a complex Banach division algebra. By nonemptiness of its spectrum, every quotient element has some for which is noninvertible; in a division algebra this means . Thus the quotient is the scalars, proving the needed Gelfand-Mazur theorem conclusion directly and producing a algebra character with kernel .
If is noninvertible, the ideal it generates is proper, since commutativity would otherwise supply its inverse. A containing maximal ideal therefore supplies a algebra character with . The converse inclusion was already proved. Hence
The Gelfand transform , , is a unital algebra homomorphism into . If , the reality of its spectrum makes real. Writing with Hermitian C-star elements gives . Thus the transform respects the algebra involution. Every element of a commutative C-star algebra is normal, and therefore
It is a linear isometry, hence injective and with closed image because is complete. The image contains constants, separates algebra characters by their definition, and is closed under complex conjugation. The complex Stone-Weierstrass theorem makes that image dense in , and closedness makes it all of that space. We have proved the Commutative Gelfand--Naimark theorem:
These steps show exactly how completeness, the algebra involution and the C-star norm identity enter the theorem. A general Banach algebra need not have an injective or norm-preserving Gelfand transform.
The general commutative theorem also has a nonunital form. Here is an elementary construction of the necessary C-star unitization, without assuming the representation theorem. Left multiplication on is isometric in operator norm: the upper bound is submultiplicativity, and testing on proves the reverse bound for nonzero . If is nonunital, adjoin the identity operator to the closed algebra inside the bounded operators on the Banach space . The sum is closed, since it is a finite-dimensional extension of a closed subspace, and . A left identity in a C-star algebra would, by taking adjoints, give a right identity; the two coincide, so would contradict nonunitality.
For the formal element , define its algebra involution by and norm by . For every ,
Taking suprema over the unit ball and using submultiplicativity gives . Apply the same inequalities to to obtain and then the C-star identity. This is the C-star unitization by left multiplication. The original algebra is a closed ideal in it.
For commutative nonunital , apply the proved unital theorem to . The scalar quotient algebra character identifies with the continuous functions on that vanish at . Removing this one algebra character gives a locally compact Hausdorff space; those functions are exactly its continuous functions vanishing at infinity. Restriction and extension of nonzero algebra characters identify this space with : a algebra character extends uniquely by , and every algebra character other than restricts nontrivially. Thus the full nonunital conclusion is .
Return to a normal C-star element in a unital C-star algebra, possibly noncommutative. Let , the closed unital star algebra generated by and . It is commutative because the two generators commute. We first prove the spectral permanence for C-star algebras needed to use the ambient spectrum rather than a potentially larger subalgebra spectrum.
If , both its ambient and subalgebra spectra are real. The complement of the compact real set is connected. Within this complement, the set of for which is nonempty by the large-parameter Neumann series; it is open by a local inverse series in and closed by continuous inversion in and closedness of . It is therefore the entire complement, proving . If a general is invertible in , then and are invertible Hermitian elements, whose inverses lie in . The elements and give a left and a right inverse for inside , and these inverses coincide. Applying this to every proves for all .
By the proved commutative theorem, . The map
is onto by the character-spectrum correspondence and spectral permanence. It is injective because algebra characters respect adjoints and are determined by their values on the star polynomials in one normal element, which are dense in . It is a continuous bijection from a compact space to a Hausdorff space, hence a homeomorphism. Consequently the inverse Gelfand transform, under this identification, supplies
It is a continuous unital star homomorphism and a linear isometry. Its image is exactly . If another such map sends to , it sends to and agrees on every polynomial in . These functions contain constants, separate points of the compact spectrum and are closed under conjugation; Stone-Weierstrass gives their uniform density. Continuity proves uniqueness on all of . This is the requested continuous functional calculus, including its isometry and image assertion.
Two conventions in the printed statement need to be made explicit. A unital map into requires to have an identity. If nonunital C-star algebras are allowed, for example , the asserted unital map into does not exist in general; the unital construction instead has target . Also the image above is the closed unital star algebra , not necessarily the smallest nonunital algebra generated by . For in , the former is and the latter is . Thus the intended assertion is correct if “generated” includes the identity; without that convention, this is a counterexample. The distinction is the unital versus nonunital generation by a normal element.
For a nonunital , take in and construct the unital calculus there. The scalar quotient algebra character sends to zero, so it sends to . Functions with therefore give elements of . They are isometrically identified with by restriction and zero extension. Approximating them by star polynomials and subtracting the constant value at zero proves that their image is exactly , with no identity adjoined. This proves the nonunital continuous functional calculus as well as specifying the corrected form of the original claim.
We finish with the positive-square-root theorem, giving a proof that even allows to be nonnormal. Define a positive element spectrally as a Hermitian element with spectrum in . The calculus of a Hermitian element shows its square is positive. Positivity is closed under sums: for positive , let . The calculus gives and the analogous bound for , hence . Since has real spectrum, the spectral norm bound forces it into . The cone is proper: an element positive and negative has spectrum in and therefore norm zero.
To establish positivity of an arbitrary adjoint product, put . Let by the continuous calculus of , and let , where the square root of the already positive is supplied by that same scalar calculus. Multiplicativity gives
Thus has nonpositive spectrum. The nonzero spectra of and agree: for general products and , direct multiplication verifies
whenever the inverse on the right exists, and the converse follows on exchanging . Hence is also nonpositive. Write with Hermitian C-star elements . Then
is positive, as a sum of Hermitian squares, and nonpositive, as a sum of the two nonpositive elements. Properness makes it zero. Therefore is both positive and nonpositive, hence zero. The C-star identity gives , and then implies . Thus is positive. This proof does not use positivity of adjoint products in establishing an earlier step.
Apply the continuous calculus of to on its nonnegative compact spectrum. It gives a positive Hermitian C-star element
For the originally normal , the equivalent direct formula is . In a nonunital algebra, the unitized construction still lands in , because the square-root function is zero at zero.
For uniqueness, suppose has nonnegative spectrum and . It commutes with , and hence with , which is a norm limit of polynomials in . The unital C-star algebra generated by is therefore commutative. Its Gelfand transform, together with spectral permanence, gives two nonnegative continuous functions whose squares are equal. Pointwise uniqueness of the nonnegative real square root makes the functions equal, and injectivity of the transform gives . This proves the positive square root in a C-star algebra in full, without an unwarranted cancellation by when zero lies in its spectrum. In the notation , zero must be included here: a noninvertible , in particular , need not have a strictly positive square root.