Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 March 2019
A subset ${\mathcal{X}}$ of a C*-algebra ${\mathcal{A}}$ is called irredundant if no $A\in {\mathcal{X}}$ belongs to the C*-subalgebra of ${\mathcal{A}}$ generated by ${\mathcal{X}}\setminus \{A\}$. Separable C*-algebras cannot have uncountable irredundant sets and all members of many classes of nonseparable C*-algebras, e.g., infinite dimensional von Neumann algebras have irredundant sets of cardinality continuum.
There exists a considerable literature showing that the question whether every AF commutative nonseparable C*-algebra has an uncountable irredundant set is sensitive to additional set-theoretic axioms, and we investigate here the noncommutative case.
Assuming $\diamondsuit$ (an additional axiom stronger than the continuum hypothesis), we prove that there is an AF C*-subalgebra of ${\mathcal{B}}(\ell _{2})$ of density $2^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{1}$ with no nonseparable commutative C*-subalgebra and with no uncountable irredundant set. On the other hand we also prove that it is consistent that every discrete collection of operators in ${\mathcal{B}}(\ell _{2})$ of cardinality continuum contains an irredundant subcollection of cardinality continuum.
Other partial results and more open problems are presented.
The research of author C. S. H. was partially supported by doctoral scholarships CAPES: 1427540 and CNPq: 167761/2017-0 and 201213/2016-8. The research of the author P. K. was partially supported by grant PVE Ciência sem Fronteiras - CNPq (406239/2013-4).