Bounded and Unitary Elements in Pro-C*-algebras

A pro-C*-algebra is a (projective) limit of C*-algebras in the category of topological *-algebras. From the perspective of non-commutative geometry, pro-C*-algebras can be seen as non-commutative k-spaces. An element of a pro-C*-algebra is bounded if there is a uniform bound for the norm of its images under any continuous *-homomorphism into a C*-algebra. The *-subalgebra consisting of the bounded elements turns out to be a C*-algebra. In this paper, we investigate pro-C*-algebras from a categorical point of view. We study the functor (−) _b that assigns to a pro-C*-algebra the C*-algebra of its bounded elements, which is the dual of the Stone-Čech-compactification. We show that (−) _b is a coreflector, and it preserves exact sequences. A generalization of the Gelfand duality for commutative unital pro-C*-algebras is also presented.