A characterization of compact operators via the non-connectedness of the attractors of a family of IFSs (Q2440927)

The authors provide a characterization of the compactness of operators on Hilbert space. This characterization is based on the theory of iterated function systems. An iterated function system on a complete metric space \(X\), denoted by \(\text{{IFS}}(X,f_1,f_2,\dots,f_n)\) with \(n\in \mathbb{N}\), consists of a finite family of contractions. A function \(f\) is a contraction if there is a constant \(\gamma \in\, ]0,1[\) such that, for any \(x,y \in X\), \(d(f(x),f(y)) \leq \gamma d(x,y)\). It is known that, for each \(\text{{IFS}}(X,f_1,f_2,\dots,f_n)\), there is a unique compact set \(A\), called an attractor, such that \[ A=\bigcup_{k=1}^n f_k(A). \] In this framework, the authors prove that a contraction \(S\) on a Hilbert space \(H\) is compact if the following condition is satisfied: given any contraction \(T\) on \(H\), there is a sequence \((K_{n,T})_{n \geq 0}\) of compact subsets of \(H\) such that the attractor of \(\text{{IFS}}(H,S,T_w)\) is not connected, where \(T_w(x)=Tx+w\), \(w \in H \setminus \bigcup_{n \in \mathbb{N}}K_{n,T}\). They also prove that the converse is true for any Banach space.