Means of unitaries, conjugations, and the Friedrichs operator (Q2642161)

A bounded linear operator \(T:\mathcal{H} \rightarrow \mathcal{H}\) is \(C\)-symmetric if \(T=CT^*C\), where \(C\) is a conjugation (isometric, conjugate-linear involution) on \(\mathcal{H}\). The main result of the paper is a characterization for \(C\)-symmetric contractions, namely: each \(C\)-symmetric contraction \(T\) is the mean of two \(C\)-symmetric unitary operators. This decomposition is unique iff \(T\) is injective. Using this fact, some corollaries are obtained for Hankel matrices, Toeplitz operators, complex symmetric operators, etc. Also, in the last section, the result is used to prove that the Friedrichs operator of a planar domain is the mean of two conjugations.