Partially fundamentally reducible operators in Kreĭn spaces (Q2516558)

A self-adjoint operator \(A\) in a Kreĭn space \((K, \; [\cdot,\cdot])\) is called fundamentally reducible if there is a fundamental decomposition \(K = K_+ \dotplus K_-\) of \(K\) and self-adjoint operators \(S_\pm\) in the Hilbert spaces \((\mathcal K_\pm, \pm[\,\cdot\, , \cdot\,])\) such that \(A\) is the direct sum of \(S_+\) and \(-S_-\). This is equivalent to the similarity of \(A\) to a self-adjoint operator in a Hilbert space \((K, \; \langle \cdot,\cdot \rangle)\) induced by a fundamental symmetry \(J\) using \(\langle \cdot,\cdot \rangle := [J \cdot,\cdot ]\). For the property ``partially fundamentally reducible'' it is only required that the operators \(S_\pm\) are densely defined and symmetric in the Hilbert spaces \((K_\pm, \; \pm [\cdot,\cdot])\) with defect numbers \((1,1)\) and that \(A\) is a self-adjoint extension of \(S_+ \oplus (-S_-)\). It is a natural question under which conditions a \textit{partially} fundamentally reducible operator is fundamentally reducible. If, additionally, \(A\) is nonnegative in \((K, \; [\cdot,\cdot])\), then this question reduces to the problem to show that neither \(\infty\) nor \(0\) is a singular critical point of \(A\) (in the terminology of definitizable operators) and \(\ker (A^2) = \ker (A)\). In the present paper, a number of conditions for these properties are presented in terms of the Weyl functions \(m_\pm\) associated with boundary triplets \(({\mathbb C}, \Gamma^\pm_0, \Gamma^\pm_1)\) for \(S^*_\pm\) in the Hilbert space \((K_\pm, \; \pm [\cdot,\cdot])\). Some of the conditions involve the asymptotic behavior of \(m_\pm(rz)\) as \(r \rightarrow \infty\) or \(r \rightarrow 0\). Furthermore, conditions for the above properties are formulated for an arbitrary nonnegative self-adjoint extension of \(S_+ \oplus (-S_-)\) in \((K, \; [\cdot,\cdot])\). Finally, the results are applied to some indefinite differential operators such as \(A f = - ((pf')' + qf) \operatorname{sgn} (t)/w\). Here, the differential expression is defined on the whole real line with limit point case at \(\pm \infty\) and \(1/p, q, w \in L^1_{\mathrm{loc}}({\mathbb R}), \; p, w > 0\), and the boundary triplets are taken as \(\Gamma^\pm_0 f := (pf') (0\pm), \, \Gamma^\pm_1 f := \mp f (0\pm)\).