Essentially coercive forms and asymptotically compact semigroups (Q2207630)

Form methods are an excellent tool in proving generation theorems for self-adjointness and semigroups. These theorems are based on the notion of \textit{coercivity}. For example, positive-coerciveness of a continuous sesquilinear form yields a holomorphic \(C_0\)-semigroup which is uniformly exponentially stable. This article relaxes various notions of coerciveness to their \textit{essential versions} and proves generation theorems for self-adjoint operators, contraction semigroups, and holomorphic semigroups. In particular, it is shown that \textit{essential positive coerciveness} is sufficient to generate a holomorphic \(C_0\)-semigroup which is asymptotically compact (also known as quasicompact). The results are complemented by their converse versions.