Extremal positive and self-adjoint extensions of suboperators (Q1826085)

A suboperator is a map from a subspace of a (complex) Hilbert space into the whole space which is a restriction of some bounded linear transformation, an operator on the space. A suboperator is said to be subpositive, subself-adjoint (and so on) if it is a restriction of a positive, self-adjoint (and so on) operator of the space. This note shows that the extension of a subpositive suboperator constructed in [\textit{Z. Sebestyén}, Acta Sci. Math. (Szeged) 46, 299-301 (1983; Zbl 0551.47005)] is of minimal norm and smallest in the ordering of self- adjoint operators, between all the positive extensions. The extremal norm-preserving extension problem is thus reduced to the corresponding question for subpositive suboperators.