Unbounded Disjointness Preserving Linear Functionals and Operators

Abstract

Let $E$ and $F$ be Banach lattices. We show first that the disjointness preserving linear functionals separate the points of any infinite dimensional Banach lattice $E$, which shows that in this case the unbounded disjointness operators from $E\to F$ separate the points of $E$. Then we show that every disjointness preserving operator $T:E\to F$ is norm bounded on an order dense ideal. In case $E$ has order continuous norm, this implies that that every unbounded disjointness preserving map $T:E\to F$ has a unique decomposition $T=R+S$, where $R$ is a bounded disjointness preserving operator and $S$ is an unbounded disjointness preserving operator, which is zero on a norm dense ideal. For the case that $E=C(X)$, with $X$ a compact Hausdorff space, we show that every disjointness preserving operator $T:C(X)\to F$ is norm bounded on an norm dense sublattice algebra of $C(X)$, which leads then to a decomposition of $T$ into a bounded disjointness operator and a finite sum of unbounded disjointness preserving operators, which are zero on order dense ideals.