Global minimum and orthogonality in \(C_{1}\)-classes. (Q1414171)

The authors characterize the global minimum of an arbitrary real-valued function \(F: E\to\mathbb{R}\) defined on a complex Banach space \(E\), in terms of the ``\(\varphi\)-directional derivative'' \[ D_\varphi F(x; y)= \lim_{t\downarrow 0}\, {F(x+ te^{i\varphi} y)- f(x)\over t}. \] Clearly, if \(v\in E\) is a global minimizer of \(F\) then \[ \inf_\varphi\, D_\varphi F(v; y)\geq 0\qquad\text{for all }y\in E. \] In the paper, the Banach space \(E\) is replaced by the set \(B(H)\) of all bounded linear operators on a complex separable and infinite-dimensional Hilbert space \(H\) and the function \(F: B(H)\to \mathbb{R}^+\) has the form \(F(X)=\| S+\phi(X)\|\) using a linear map \(\phi: B(H)\to B(H)\) and assuming that \(\phi(X)\) and \(S\) belongs to the Neumann-Schatten class \(C_1\subset B(H)\) (i.e., to the set of operators \(T\in B(H)\) for which \(\| T\|= \sum s_i(T)= \text{tr}(T)\) where \(s_i(T)\) are the singular values and \(\text{tr}(T)\) is the trace of \(T\)). It is shown that \(V\in B(H)\) is a global minimizer of \(F\) if and only if \[ \inf_\varphi\, D_\varphi F(V; \phi(Y))\geq 0\quad\text{for all }Y\in B(H)\text{ with }\phi(Y)\in C_1 \] and if and only if \[ \| Q\phi(Y)P\|- |\text{tr}(U^* \phi(Y))|\geq 0\quad\text{for all }Y\in B(H)\text{ with }\phi(Y)\in C_1, \] where \(X= U| X|\) is the polar decomposition of \(X:= S+ \phi(V)\); \(P\) and \(Q\) are the projections of \(X\) to \(\ker(X)\) and \(\ker(X^*)\), respectively. The results are applied to characterize the operators which are orthogonal to the range of elementary operators.