A transformation rule for the index of commuting operators (Q2345694)

The paper is devoted to the compactness property of the tensor product of bounded linear operators on Hilbert spaces. Let \(H\) and \(K\) be nontrivial Hilbert spaces with nontrivial bounded linear operators \(T\in B\left(H\right) \) and \(S\in B\left( K\right) \), respectively. The main result of the paper asserts that \(T\otimes S\in B\left( H\otimes K\right) \) is a compact operator on the Hilbert tensor product \(H\otimes K\) iff so are \(T\) and \(S\). The result is based on the following key lemma. If \(\left( x\otimes y_{n}\right) _{n}\) is a sequence in \(H\otimes K\) convergent to \(s\), then \(s=x\otimes y\) for some \(y\in K\).