Invariant subspaces of idempotents on Hilbert spaces (Q2108918)

Let \(\mathcal{H}\) be complex, separable Hilbert space. A bounded linear operator \(T\) on \(\mathcal{H}\) is said to be idempotent if \(T^{2}=T\). If, in addition, \(T^{\ast }=T\), then \(T\) is said to be an orthogonal projection. Also the bounded linear operator \(T\) is quasinilpotent if \(\sigma (T)=\left\{ 0\right\} \), where \(\sigma (T)\) denotes the spectrum of \(T\). This article introduces the necessary and sufficient conditions on the quasinilpotent operator \(T,\) for which \(T\) has a non-trivial closed invariant subspace. The condition is ``every pair of idempotents with a quasinilpotent commutator has a non-trivial common closed invariant subspace''. Among other results, the authors present a complete classification of essentially idempotent operators.