Fredholm differential operators with unbounded coefficients (Q1763671)

The authors prove the following quite general result: A first-order linear differential operator \(G\) with unbounded operator coefficients is Fredholm on spaces of functions on \({\mathbb R}\) with values in a reflexive Banach space (in fact, they suspect that the reflexivity assumption can be removed) if and only if the corresponding strongly continuous evolution family (whose generator is \(G\)) has exponential dichotomies on both \( {\mathbb R}_{+}\) and \({\mathbb R}_{-}\) and a pair of the ranges of the dichotomy projections is Fredholm. Furthermore, the Fredholm index of \(G\) is equal to the Fredholm index of the pair. The definitions of the terms ``exponential dichotomy'', ``Fredholm pair of subspaces'', and ``Fredholm index'' (of the pair) are reviewed on page 391 for the reader's convenience. The strength of the result becomes evident in the case where the evolution family is the propagator (Cauchy operator) of a well-posed differential equation \(u^{\prime }(t)=A(t)u(t)\), where \(A(t)\), \(t\in {\mathbb R}\), are, in general, unbounded operators. In this case, \(G\) is a closure of the operator \(-(d/dt)+A(t)\). Thus, in the case of such equations the authors provide a complete infinite-dimensional generalization of well-known finite-dimensional results. Sections 1 through 6 are devoted to the proofs of the main statements (and the needed lemmas), while the last section 7 contains some interesting applications.