On the Nonexistence of Nontrivial Involutive n-Homomorphisms of C*-algebras

An n-homomorphism between algebras is a linear map $phi : A to B$ such that $phi(a_1 ... a_n) = phi(a_1)... phi(a_n)$ for all elements $a_1, >..., a_n in A.$ Every homomorphism is an n-homomorphism, for all n >= 2, but the converse is false, in general. Hejazian et al. [7] ask: Is every *-preserving n-homomorphism between C*-algebras continuous? We answer their question in the affirmative, but the even and odd n arguments are surprisingly disjoint. We then use these results to prove stronger ones: If n >2 is even, then $phi$ is just an ordinary *-homomorphism. If n >= 3 is odd, then $phi$ is a difference of two orthogonal *-homomorphisms. Thus, there are no nontrivial *-linear n-homomorphisms between C*-algebras.