Conditional expectations and operator decompositions

For aC ^*-algebraA with a conditional expectation Φ:A → A onto a subalgebraB we have the linear decompositionA=B⊕H whereH=ker(Φ). Since Φ preserves adjoints, it is also clear that a similar decomposition holds for the selfadjoint parts:A ^s =B ^s ⊕H ^s (we useV ^s ={aεV;a ^*=a} for any subspaceV of A). Apply now the exponential function to each of the three termsA ^s ,B ^s , andH ^s . The results are: the setG ⁺ of positive invertible elements ofA, the setB ⁺ of positive invertible elements ofB, and the setC={e^h;h ^*=h, Φ(h)=0}, respectively. We consider here the question of lifting the decompositionA ^s =B ^s ⊕H ^s to the exponential sets. Concretely, is every element ofG ⁺ the product of elements ofB ⁺ andC, respectively, just as any selfadjoint element ofA is the sum of selfadjoint elements ofB andH? The answer is yes in the following sense: Eacha ε G ⁺ is the positive part of a productbe of elementsb ε B ⁺ and c εC, and bothb andc are uniquely determined and depend analytically ona. This can be rephrased as follows: The map (6, c) →(bc) ⁺ is an analytic diffeomorphism fromB ⁺ x C ontoG ⁺, where for any invertiblex ε A we denote with x⁺ the positive square root ofxx ^*. This result can be expressed equivalently as: The map (b, c) →bcb is a diffeomorphism between the same spaces. Notice that combining the polar decomposition with these results we can write every invertibleg ε A asg=bcu, whereb ε B ⁺,c ε C, andu is unitary. This decomposition is unique and the factorsb, c, u depend analytically ofg. In the case of matrix algebras with Φ=trace/dimension, the factorization corresponds tog=| det(g)|cu withc > 0,det(c)=1, andu unitary. This paper extends some results proved by G. Corach and the authors in 2]. Also, Theorem 2 states that the reductive homogeneous space resulting from a conditional expectation satisfies the regularity hypothesis introduced by L. Mata-Lorenzo and L. Recht in 5], Definition 11.1. The situation considered here is the ”general context” for regularity indicated in the introduction of the last mentioned paper.