An account of shift operators (Q5929769)

A linear operator \(S\) on a Banach space \(E\) is called a shift on \(E\) if the following are satisfied: \(S\) is a linear isometry, \(S\) has codimension 1 in \(E\), the intersection of the subspaces \(S^n(E)\), \(n\in N\), is the null subspace. The properties of a shift are modelled on the classical right shift on sequence spaces. The authors survey the literature about the existence, classification and representation of a shift on \(C(X)\), where \(X\) is a compact Hausdorff topological space. Known and new results, open problems are collected in a systematic way. The paper is a good introduction to an interesting problem of Operator Theory.