Construction and classification of minimal representations of semi- separable kernels (Q1118128)

Recently, \textit{I. Gohberg} and \textit{M. A. Kaashoek} [Minimal representation of semi-separable kernels and systems with separable boundary conditions, ibid. 124, 436-458 (1987)] analyzed the simplest separable representations of kernels k of integral operators \(K: L_ 2([a,b],Z)\to L_ 2([a,b],Y)\) of the form \((K\phi)(t):=\int^{b}_{a}k(t,s)\phi (s)ds,\) where Z and Y are finite- dimensional inner product spaces. The pair \(\{\) F,G\(\}\) is called a (lower) separable representation of k on the (lower) triangular part of [a,b]\(\times [a,b]\) if the matrices F(t): \(X\to Y\) and G(t): \(Z\to X\), \(t\in [a,b]\), have square-integrable entries and satisfy \(k(t,s)=F(t)G(s)\) for \(a\leq s<t\leq b\), a.e. The dimension of the finite- dimensional inner product space X (the so-called internal space) is the order of \(\{\) F,G\(\}\). It was shown that for a kernel possessing a lower separable representation it is possible to construct an irreducible one which, however, need not be minimal. The present paper answers a number of questions raised in the paper mentioned above: it describes an algorithm for constructing a minimal lower separable representation of k out of an irreducible one, and it studies the number of such (non-similar) representations, using the classification of the minimal lower separable representations of k established in the central part of the paper. An application of these results to linear time-varying systems with separable boundary conditions concludes the paper.