Some classes of pre-Hilbert algebras with norm-one central idempotent

In this paper we first characterize the pre-Hilbert algebras with a norm-one central idempotent e such that ‖ex‖ = ‖x‖ for any x ∈ A. This generalizes a well-known theorem by Ingelstam asserting that every alternative pre-Hilbert algebra with a unit 1 such that ‖1‖ = 1 is isomorphic to ?, ?, ? or $\mathbb{O}$ . We also show that every power-associative pre-Hilbert algebra satisfying ‖x ²‖ = ‖x‖² for every element has a unique nonzero idempotent, which is a unit element. In fact, the same conclusion will be proved in a more general setting. As application we give some conditions characterizing when a real algebra A, which is a prehilbert space, is isomorphic to one of the Hilbert algebras ?, ?, ? or $\mathbb{O}$ .