On the spaces of bounded and compact multiplicative Hankel operators (Q2329066)

The author says that a sequence \(\alpha=(\alpha(n))_n\) in \(\ell_2\) is said to define a multiplicative Hankel operator, \(M(\alpha)\), if the equation \(\langle M(\alpha)a,b \rangle=\sum_{n,m}^\infty a(n)\overline{b(m)}\alpha(nm)\) (where \(a,b\) belong to \(\ell_2\)) defines a bounded linear operator from \(\ell_2\) to \(\ell_2\). Using \(\mathcal{M}\) to denote the space of all bounded multiplicative Hankel operators and \(\mathcal{M}_0\) to denote the space of all compact Hankel operators, the author shows that, for each \(M(\alpha)\) in \(\mathcal{M}\), there is \(N(\beta)\) in \(\mathcal{M}_0\) such that \(\|M(\alpha)-N(\beta)\|=\inf\{\|M(\alpha)-K\|:K\in \mathcal{M}_0\}\). Moreover, there are infinitely many compact multiplicative Hankel operators \(N(\beta)\) with this property. It is also shown that \(\mathcal{M}_0\) is an $M$-ideal in \(\mathcal{M}\) and a description of the unique predual of \(\mathcal{M}\) as the tensor product of \(\ell_2{\hat\star}\ell_2\) with respect to the Dirichlet convolution is provided. The results in this paper are obtained by considering \(\mathcal{M}\) as a subspace of the space of bounded linear operators on \(\ell_2\) and \(\mathcal{M}_0\) as a subspace of the space of compact linear operators on \(\ell_2\).