On the norm-preservation of squares in real algebra representation

One of the main results of the article Gelfand theory for real Banach algebras, recently published in [Rev R Acad Cienc Exactas Fís Nat Ser A Mat RACSAM 114(4):163, 2020] is Proposition 4.1, which establishes that the norm inequality $$\Vert a^{2}\Vert \le \Vert a^{2}+b^{2}\Vert $$ ‖ a 2 ‖ ≤ ‖ a 2 + b 2 ‖ for $$a,b\in {\mathcal {A}}$$ a , b ∈ A is sufficient for a commutative real Banach algebra $${\mathcal {A}}$$ A with a unit to be isomorphic to the space $${\mathcal {C}}_{{\mathbb {R}}}({\mathcal {K}})$$ C R ( K ) of continuous real-valued functions on a compact Hausdorff space $${\mathcal {K}}$$ K . Moreover, in this proposition is also shown that if the above condition (which involves all the operations of the algebra) holds, then the real-algebra isomorphism given by the Gelfand transform preserves the norm of squares. A very natural question springing from the above-mentioned result is whether an isomorphism of $${\mathcal {A}}$$ A onto $${\mathcal {C}}_{{\mathbb {R}}}({\mathcal {K}})$$ C R ( K ) is always norm-preserving of squares. This note is devoted to providing a negative answer to this problem. To that end, we construct algebra norms on spaces $${\mathcal {C}}_{{\mathbb {R}}}({\mathcal {K}})$$ C R ( K ) which are $$(1+\epsilon )$$ ( 1 + ϵ ) -equivalent to the sup-norm and with the norm of the identity function equal to 1, where the norm of every nonconstant function is different from the standard sup-norm. We also provide examples of two-dimensional normed real algebras $${\mathcal {A}}$$ A where $$\Vert a^2\Vert \le k \Vert a^2+b^2\Vert $$ ‖ a 2 ‖ ≤ k ‖ a 2 + b 2 ‖ for all $$a,b\in {\mathcal {A}}$$ a , b ∈ A , for some $$k>1$$ k > 1 , but the inequality fails for $$k=1$$ k = 1 .