Multiplicative and Jordan multiplicative maps on structural matrix algebras

Abstract: Let $M_n$ denote the algebra of $n \times n$ complex matrices and let $\mathcal{A}\subseteq M_n$ be an arbitrary structural matrix algebra, i.e. a subalgebra of $M_n$ that contains all diagonal matrices. We consider injective maps $\phi \colon \mathcal{A}\to M_n$ that satisfy the condition $$ \phi(X \bullet Y) = \phi(X) \bullet \phi(Y), \quad \text{for all } X,Y \in \mathcal{A}, $$ where $\bullet$ is either the standard matrix multiplication $(X,Y)\mapsto XY$, or the (normalized) Jordan product $(X,Y) \mapsto \frac{1}{2}(XY+YX)$. We show that all such maps $\phi$ are automatically additive if and only if $\mathcal{A}$ does not contain a central rank-one idempotent. Moreover, in this case, we fully characterize the form of these maps.