Mankiewicz's theorem and the Mazur--Ulam property for C*-algebras

Abstract: We prove that every unital C*-algebra $A$ has the Mazur--Ulam property. Namely, every surjective isometry from the unit sphere $S_A$ of $A$ onto the unit sphere $S_Y$ of another normed space $Y$ extends to a real linear map. This extends the result of A. M. Peralta and F. J. Fernandez-Polo who have proved the same under the additional assumption that both $A$ and $Y$ are von Neumann algebras. In the course of the proof, we strengthen Mankiewicz's theorem and prove that every surjective isometry from a closed unit ball with enough extreme points onto an arbitrary convex subset of a normed space is necessarily affine.