A new proof of the noncommutative Banach-Stone theorem

Abstract

Surjective isometries between unital C*-algebras were classified in 1951 by Kadison. In 1972 Paterson and Sinclair handled the nonunital case by assuming Kadison&#39;s theorem and supplying some supplementary lemmas. Here we combine an observation of Paterson and Sinclair with variations on the methods of Yeadon and the author, producing a fundamentally new proof of the structure of surjective isometries between (nonunital) C*-algebras. In the final section we indicate how our techniques may be applied to classify surjective isometries of noncommutative Lp spaces, extending some recent results of the author to 0 < p leq 1.