Operator version of the best approximation problem in Hilbert \(C^\ast\)-modules (Q2019234)

If \(W\) is a one-dimensional subspace of a Hilbert space \(V\) spanned by some \(\eta \in V\) and if \(\xi\in V\), then it is well known that there is a unique \(\lambda \in \mathbb{C}\) such that \(\|\xi+\lambda \eta\| \leq \|\xi+\mu\eta\|\) for all \(\mu\in\mathbb{C}\). In this paper, the authors explore an operator version of this best approximation problem in the setting of Hilbert \(C^*\)-modules. More precisely, assume that \(\mathcal{A}\subseteq B(\mathcal{H})\) is a \(C^*\)-algebra, \(\mathcal{V}\subseteq B(\mathcal{H},\mathcal{K})\) is a Hilbert \(C^*\)-module over \(\mathcal{A}\) and \(X, Y \in \mathcal{V}\). The authors seek \(A\in B(\mathcal{H})\) such that \[ |X+YA|\leq |X+YB| \tag{*} \] for all \(B \in\mathcal{A}\), where \(|C|\) denotes the positive square root of \(C^*C\) in \(B(\mathcal{H})\). They show that such an operator exists if and only if the range of \(Y^*X\) is contained in the range of \(Y^*Y\), and in this case it can be chosen to belong to the double commutant \(\mathcal{A}^{''}\) of \(\mathcal{A}\). They also consider Hilbert \(C^*\)-modules in which for every \(X\) and \(Y\) there is (a unique) \(A\in \mathcal{A}^{''}\) with the property (\(*\)) and show that a necessary and sufficient condition for \(\mathcal{V}\) to have this property is that the range of \(X\) is closed in \(\mathcal{H}\) for all \(X \in \mathcal{V}\).