Semi-Fredholm operators and pure contractions in Hilbert space (Q369377)

Let \(H\) be a complex Hilbert space and \({\mathcal C}_{0}(H)\) be the set of all pure contractions on \(H\), i.e., such linear operators on \(H\) that \(\| Ax\|<\| x\|\) for all nonzero \(x\in H\). Denote by \({\mathcal C}(H)\) the set of all densely defined closed linear operators on \(H\). In [\textit{W. E. Kaufman}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 72, 531--534 (1978; Zbl 0404.47001)] it was proved that the function \(\Gamma(A)=A(I-A^{\ast}A)^{-1/2}\) maps the set \({\mathcal C}_{0}(H)\) one-to-one onto the set \({\mathcal C}(H)\). One of the main results of the paper under review is as follows. An operator \(A\in{\mathcal C}_{0}(H)\) is a semi-Fredholm operator (resp., Fredholm operator) if and only if \(\Gamma(A)\) is a semi-Fredholm operator (resp., Fredholm operator). The paper contains some applications of the obtained results to the case of \(2\times 2\) upper triangular operator matrices and linear delay differential operators.