Characterizations of Ideals in IntermediateC-RingsA(X)via theA-Compactifications ofX
LetXbe a completely regular topological space. An intermediate ring is a ringA(X)of continuous functions satisfyingC*(X)⊆A(X)⊆C(X). In Redlin and Watson (1987) and in Panman et al. (2012), correspondences𝒵AandℨAare defined between ideals inA(X)andz-filters onX, and it is shown that these extend the well-known correspondences studied separately forC∗(X)andC(X), respectively, to any intermediate ring. Moreover, the inverse map𝒵A←sets up a one-one correspondence between the maximal ideals ofA(X)and thez-ultrafilters onX. In this paper, we define a function𝔎Athat, in the case thatA(X)is aC-ring, describesℨAin terms of extensions of functions to realcompactifications ofX. For such rings, we show thatℨA←mapsz-filters to ideals. We also give a characterization of the maximal ideals inA(X)that generalize the Gelfand-Kolmogorov theorem fromC(X)toA(X).