An overview of some recent developments on the invariant subspace problem

DOI10.2478/CONOP-2012-0001MaRDI QIDQ2851039zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Isabelle Chalendar, Jonathan R. Partington

Publication date 2 October 2013

Published in Concrete Operators (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.2478/conop-2012-0001

Bishop operator composition operator finitely strictly singular invariant subspace strictly singular universal operator weighted shift

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Invariant subspaces of linear operators (47A15) Linear operators defined by compactness properties (47B07) Linear composition operators (47B33) Linear operators on special spaces (weighted shifts, operators on sequence spaces, etc.) (47B37)

Review text

According to Paul Halmos, ``one of the most important, most difficult and most exasperating unsolved problems of operator theory is the problem of invariant subspaces ([\textit{P. R. Halmos}, A Hilbert space problem book. 2nd ed. New York--Heidelberg--Berlin: Springer-Verlag (1982; Zbl 0496.47001)], Problem 191).NEWLINENEWLINEThe paper under review presents an overview of some recent developments on the invariant subspace problem with which the authors have been concerned.NEWLINENEWLINEThe authors provide in Section~1 a brief historical account of results related to the invariant subspace problem.NEWLINENEWLINEIn Section~2, they consider the issue of universal operators. A~bounded linear operator \(U\) on a Hilbert space \({\mathcal H}\) is said to be \textit{universal} if, for each non-zero bounded linear operator \(T\) on \({\mathcal H}\), there is a scalar \(\lambda \neq 0\) and an invariant subspace \({\mathcal M}\) for \(U\) such that the restriction \(U|_{{\mathcal M}}\) is similar to \((\lambda T)\).NEWLINENEWLINEThere is a strong connection between universal operators and the invariant subspace problem: every bounded linear operator on \({\mathcal H}\) has a non-trivial invariant subspace if and only if the minimal non-trivial invariant subspaces of a given universal operator are all one-dimensional.NEWLINENEWLINE\textit{R. S. Caradus} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 23, 526--527 (1969; Zbl 0186.19204)] showed that, if a bounded linear operator \(U\) on \({\mathcal H}\) satisfies that (1) \(\ker U\) is infinite-dimensional and (2) \(U\) is surjective, then \(U\) is universal. The authors apply this criterion to test universality for the adjoint of a composition operator on the Hardy space. Let \(\varphi : \mathbb D \to \mathbb D\) be a holomorphic map and consider the composition operator \(C_\varphi\) defined on the Hardy space \(H^2(\mathbb D)\) by the expression \(C_\varphi f = f \circ \varphi\) for all \(f \in H^2(\mathbb D)\). Define a measure \(\mu_\varphi\) on the Borel subsets of \(\mathbb T\) by the expression \(\mu_\varphi (E)=m(\varphi^{-1}(E)),\) where \(m\) is the Lebesgue measure. Then \(\mu_\varphi\) is absolutely continuous with respect to \(m\) and we may consider the Radon-Nikodým derivative NEWLINE\[NEWLINE g_\varphi = \frac{d\mu_\varphi}{dm}. NEWLINE\]NEWLINE The authors prove the apparently new result that, if \(g_\varphi\) is essentially bounded away from zero and \(\varphi\) is not univalent, then \(C_\varphi^\ast\) is universal. The result applies to any finite Blaschke product \(\varphi\) of degree \((\geq 2)\). The rest of Section 2 surveys several results regarding the universality of operators of the form \(T-\lambda I\), where \(T\) is a composition operator on the Hardy space or \(T\) is a bilateral weighted shift.NEWLINENEWLINEIn Section~3, the authors consider Bishop operators. Let \(0<\alpha<1\). The \textit{Bishop operator} \(T_\alpha\) is defined on the Hilbert space \(L^2[0,1]\) by the expression NEWLINE\[NEWLINE (T_\alpha f)(t) = t f(\{t+\alpha\}), NEWLINE\]NEWLINE where the curly brackets denote the fractional part of a number. \textit{A. M. Davie} [Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 6, 343--348 (1974; Zbl 0287.47003)] showed that, for every \(\alpha\) that is not a Liouville number, the Bishop operator \(T_\alpha\) has a non-trivial closed hyperinvariant subspace. Recall that \(\alpha\) is a Liouville number if for each \(n\) there exist \(p\) and \(q\) such that \(q>1\) and \(|\alpha -p/q| < q^{-n}\). It is an open question the existence of invariant subspaces for \(T_\alpha\) when \(\alpha\) is a Liouville number.NEWLINENEWLINEIn Section~4, the authors consider finitely strictly singular operators on Banach spaces. Let \((X,Y)\) be two Banach spaces. A bounded linear operator \(T : X \to Y\) is said to be \textit{strictly singular} if, for each \(\varepsilon >0\) and for each infinite-dimensional subspace \(Z \subseteq X\), there is a vector \(z \in Z\) with \(\|z\|=1\) and \(\|Tx\| < \varepsilon\). A bounded linear operator \(T : X \to Y\) is said to be \textit{finitely strictly singular} if, for each \(\varepsilon >0\), there is an \(N \in \mathbb N\) such that, for every subspace \(Z \subseteq X\) with \(\dim X \geq N\), there is a \(z \in Z\) with \(\|z\|=1\) and \(\|Tx\| < \varepsilon\). The following implications hold: NEWLINE\[NEWLINE T \text{ compact} \Rightarrow T \text{ finitely strictly singular} \Rightarrow T \text{ strictly singular.} NEWLINE\]NEWLINE A.\,Pełczyński posed the question of the existence of invariant subspaces for strictly singular operators, inspiring \textit{C. J. Read} to investigate and answer this question negatively by constructing a stricly singular operator without non-trivial invariant subspaces [Stud. Math. 132, No. 3, 203--226 (1999; Zbl 0929.47004)]. The existence of invariant subspaces for finitely strictly singular operators remained an open problem. The authors of the present paper provide a negative solution to this problem by showing that Read's strictly singular operator is, in fact, finitely strictly singular.

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