On a class of Hankel operators: Fredholm properties and invertibility (Q1822744)

The author studies the Fredholm properties and invertibility of Hankel operators \[ (1)\quad K_{\lambda}\phi =\lambda \phi - \int^{\infty}_{0}k(t+\tau)\phi (\tau)dt \] in \(L_ 2({\mathbb{R}}_+)\), where \^k(\(\xi)\), the Fourier transform of k, is a measurable essentially bounded function in \({\mathbb{R}}.\) He reduces (1) to a Wiener-Hopf operator with a matrix valued symbol naturally associated with the operator (1). A more complete result is obtained for the case, where \(k\in PC({\mathbb{R}})\), the space of piecewise continuous functions on \({\mathbb{R}}\) with finite limits at \(\pm \infty\). An application to the diffraction problem is given.