Choquet Boundary for Real Function Algebras

The concepts of Choquet boundary and Shilov boundary are well-established in the context of a complex function algebra (see [2] for example). There have been a few attempts to develop the concept of a Shilov boundary for real algebras, [4], [6] and [7]. But there seems to be none to develop the concept of Choquet boundary for real algebras.The aim of this paper is to develop the theory of Choquet boundary of a real function algebra (see Definition (1.8)) along the lines of the corresponding theory for a complex function algebra.In the first section we define a real-part representing measure for a continuous linear functional ϕ on a real function algebra A with the property ║ϕ║ = 1 = ϕ(1). The elements of A are functions on a compact, Hausdorff space X. The Choquet boundary is then defined as the set of those points x ∊ X such that the real part of the evaluation functional, Re(ex), has a unique real part representing measure.