We prove that there exist finitely generated, stably finite algebras which are not linear sofic. This was left open by Arzhantseva and Păunescu in 2017.

We show that there is no nontrivial idempotent in the reduced group $\ell ^p$-operator algebra $B^p_r(F_n)$ of the free group $F_n$ on n generators for each positive integer n.

We study ring-theoretic (in)finiteness properties—such as Dedekind-finiteness and proper infiniteness—of ultraproducts (and more generally, reduced products) of Banach algebras.

While we characterise when an ultraproduct has these ring-theoretic properties in terms of its underlying sequence of algebras, we find that, contrary to the $C^*$ -algebraic setting, it is not true in general that an ultraproduct has a ring-theoretic finiteness property if and only if “ultrafilter many” of the underlying sequence of algebras have the same property. This might appear to violate the continuous model theoretic counterpart of Łoś’s Theorem; the reason it does not is that for a general Banach algebra, the ring theoretic properties we consider cannot be verified by considering a bounded subset of the algebra of fixed bound. For Banach algebras, we construct counter-examples to show, for example, that each component Banach algebra can fail to be Dedekind-finite while the ultraproduct is Dedekind-finite, and we explain why such a counter-example is not possible for $C^*$ -algebras. Finally, the related notion of having stable rank one is also studied for ultraproducts.

We define extensions of the weighted core–EP inverse and weighted core–EP pre-orders of bounded linear operators on Hilbert spaces to elements of a $C^{\ast }$-algebra. Some properties of the weighted core–EP inverse and weighted core–EP pre-orders are generalized and some new ones are proved. Using the weighted element, the weighted core–EP pre-order, the minus partial order and the star partial order of certain elements, new weighted pre-orders are presented on the set of all $wg$-Drazin invertible elements of a $C^{\ast }$-algebra. Applying these results, we introduce and characterize new partial orders which extend the core–EP pre-order to a partial order.

We introduce the concept of an E-valued function algebra, a type of Banach algebra that consists of continuous E-valued functions on some compact Hausdorff space, where E is a Banach algebra. We present some basic results about such algebras, having to do with the Shilov boundary and the set of peak points of some commutative E-valued function algebras. We give some specific examples.