Continuous spectrum-shrinking maps between finite-dimensional algebras

Abstract: Let $\mathcal{A}$ and $\mathcal{B}$ be unital finite-dimensional complex algebras, each equipped with the unique Hausdorff vector topology. Denote by $\mathrm{Max}(\mathcal{A})={\mathcal{M}1, \ldots, \mathcal{M}_p}$ and $\mathrm{Max}(\mathcal{B})={\mathcal{N}_1, \ldots, \mathcal{N}_q}$ the sets of all maximal ideals of $\mathcal{A}$ and $\mathcal{B}$, respectively, and define the quantities $$k_i:=\sqrt{\dim(\mathcal{A}/\mathcal{M}_i)}, \, \, 1 \leq i \leq p \quad \text{ and } \quad m:=\sum{j=1}^q\sqrt{\dim(\mathcal{B}/\mathcal{N}_j)},$$ which are positive integers by Wedderburn's structure theorem. We show that there exists a continuous spectrum-shrinking map $\phi: \mathcal{A} \to \mathcal{B}$ (i.e. $\mathrm{sp}(\phi(x))\subseteq \mathrm{sp}(x)$ for all $x \in \mathcal{A}$) if and only if the linear Diophantine equation $$ k_1x_1 + \cdots + k_px_p = m $$ has a non-negative integer solution $(x_1,\ldots,x_p)$. Moreover, all such maps $\phi$ are spectrum preserving (i.e. $\mathrm{sp}(\phi(x))=\mathrm{sp}(x)$ for all $x \in \mathcal{A}$) if and only if each non-negative solution consists only of positive integers.