A not necessarily continuous, linear or multiplicative function from an algebra A into itself is called a local automorphism if agrees with an automorphism of A at each point in A. In this paper, we study the question when a local automorphism of a C*-algebra, or a W*-algebra, is an automorphism.

We provide some characterizations for SOC-monotone and SOC-convex functions by using differential analysis. From these characterizations, we particularly obtain that a continuously differentiable function defined in an open interval is SOC-monotone (SOC-convex) of order <i>n</i> 3 if and only if it is 2-matrix monotone (matrix convex), and furthermore, such a function is also SOC-monotone (SOC-convex) of order <i>n</i> 2 if it is 2-matrix monotone (matrix convex). In addition, we also prove that Conjecture 4.2 proposed in Chen (Optimization 55:363385, 2006) does not hold in general. Some examples are included to illustrate that these characterizations open convenient ways to verify the SOC-monotonicity and the SOC-convexity of a continuously differentiable function defined on an open interval, which are often involved in the solution methods of the convex second-order cone optimization.

Bisch and Jones proposed the classification of planar algebras by simple generators and relations. They investigated with the second author the classification of planar algebras generated by 2-boxes. In this paper, we classify singly-generated Thurston-relation planar algebras, defined as subfactor planar algebras generated by a 3-box satisfying a relation proposed by Dylan Thurston. Our main result shows that such subfactor planar algebras are either the E6 subfactor planar algebras or belong to a two-parameter family of planar algebras arising from the representations of type A quantum groups. We introduce a new method for determining positivity of the Markov trace of planar algebras in this family.

Recently, the invertibility of linear combinations of two idempotents has been studied by several authors. Let P and Q be idempotents in a Banach algebra. It was shown that the invertibility of P+ Q is equivalent to that of aP+ bQ for nonzero a, b with a+ b= 0. In this note, we obtain a similar result for square zero operators and those operators satisfying x2= dx for some scalar d. More generally, we show that if P, Q satisfy a quadratic polynomial (x c)(x d) then the linear combination aP+ bQ c (a+ b) being invertible or Fredholm (and the index) is independent of the choice of the nonzero scalars a, b. However, this is not the case when P and Q are involutions, unitaries, partial isometries, k-potents (k 3) and other nilpotents, as counterexamples are provided.

We perform quantitative spectral analysis of the self-adjoint Dirichlet Laplacian \mathsf {H} on an unbounded, radially symmetric (generalized) parabolic layer \mathsf {H} . It was known before that \mathsf {H} has an infinite number of eigenvalues below the threshold of its essential spectrum. In the present paper, we find the discrete spectrum asymptotics for \mathsf {H} by means of a consecutive reduction to the analogous asymptotic problem for an effective one-dimensional Schrdinger operator on the half-line with the potential the behaviour of which far away from the origin is determined by the geometry of the layer \mathsf {H} at infinity.