Reduced solutions of Douglas equations and angles between subspaces (Q1018365)

Given separable complex Hilbert spaces \(\mathcal H\) and \(\mathcal K \), let \(\mathcal L(\mathcal H,\mathcal K)\) be the algebra of all bounded linear operators from \(\mathcal H\) to \( \mathcal K\). According to \textit{M.\,L.\thinspace Arias}, \textit{G.\,Corach} and \textit{M.\,C.\thinspace Gonzales} [Proc.\ Am.\ Math.\ Soc.\ 136, No.\,9, 3177--3183 (2008; Zbl 1146.47006)], if \(\mathcal H\), \(\mathcal G \), \(\mathcal K \) are Hilbert spaces, \(B \in \mathcal L(\mathcal H,\mathcal K) \) and \(C \in \mathcal L(\mathcal G,\mathcal K)\) are such that the equation \(BX=C\) (\textit{Douglas equation}) has a solution, and \(\mathcal M \) is a topological complement of \(N(B)= \{h\in \mathcal H : B h = 0 \}\), then the \textit{reduced solution for \(\mathcal M\)} of the equation \(BX=C\) is the unique solution \(X_{\mathcal M}\) of the equation, satisfying \(R(X_{\mathcal M})\subseteq \mathcal M\). The main result of the paper under review states that, among all solutions, reduced solutions are those \(Y\) which can be factorized as \(Y=B' C\) for some generalized inverse of \(B\) such that \(R(B'B)\) is closed; this set coincides with the set of those solutions \(Y\) such that \(R(Y)\) has positive Dixmier angle with \(N(B)\). These results are applied to the problem of characterizing positive solutions. Finally, the authors give a partition of a certain set of projections wich are symmetrizable for a semidefinite positive bounded linear operator.