Additive jointly separating maps and ring homomorphisms

Abstract: Let $X$ and $Y$ be compact Hausdorff spaces, $E$ and $F$ be real or complex normed spaces and $A(X,E)$ be a subspace of $C(X,E)$. For a function $f\in C(X,E)$, let $\coz(f)$ be the cozero set of $f$. A pair of additive maps $S,T: A(X,E) \lo C(Y,F)$ is said to be jointly separating if $\coz(Tf)\cap \coz(Sg)=\emptyset$ whenever $\coz(f)\cap \coz(g)= \emptyset$. In this paper, first we give a partial description of additive jointly separating maps between certain spaces of vector-valued continuous functions (including spaces of vector-valued Lipschitz functions, absolutely continuous functions and continuously differentiable functions). Then we apply the results to characterize continuous ring homomorphisms between certain Banach algebras of vector-valued continuous functions. In particular, the results provide some generalizations of the recent results on unital homomorphisms between vector-valued Lipschitz algebras, with a different approach.