ON HOMOMORPHISMS ON $C^*$-ALGEBRAS

One of the most important problems in automatic continuity theory is to solve the question of continuity of an algebra homomorphism from a Banach algebra into a semisimple Banach algebra with dense range. Many results on this subject are obtained imposing some conditions on the domains or the ranges of homomorphisms. For most recent results and references in automatic continuity theory one may refer to [1], [4] and [5]. In this note we study some properties of homomorphisms from $C^{*}$-algebras into Banach algebras. It is shown that the range of an isomorphism from a $C^{*}$-algebra into a Banach algebra contains no non zero element of the radical of B. Using this result we show that the same holds for a continuous homomorphism, hence a Banach algebra which is the image of a $C^{*}$-algebra under a continuous homomorphism is necessarily semisimple. Thus if there is a homomorphism from a $C^{*}$-algebra onto a non-semisimple Banach algebra it must be discontinuous. Also it follows that every non zero homomorphism from a $C^{*}$-algebra into a radical algebra is discontinuous. Then we make a brief observation on the behavior of quasinilpotent element of noncommutative $C^{*}$-algebras in relation with continuous homomorphisms.momorphisms.