Optimal decompositions of translations of \(L^{2}\)-functions (Q841663)

In this paper, the authors offer a computational approach to the spectral function for a finite family of commuting operators and give some applications. Motivated by questions about wavelets and from signal processing, the authors study a problem about the spectral concentration of integral translations of functions in the Hilbert space \(L^2(\mathbb{R}^n)\). The approach presented in this paper applies more generally to families of \(n\) arbitrary commuting unitary operators in a complex Hilbert space \(\mathcal {H}\), or equivalently, the spectral theory of a unitary representation \(U\) of the rank-\(n\) lattice \(\mathbb{Z}^n\) in \(\mathbb{R}^n\). Starting with a nonzero vector \(\psi\in\mathcal {H}\), the authors look for relations among the vectors in the cyclic subspace in \(\mathcal {H}\) generated by \(\psi\), where, for a family \(\{T_1,\dots,T_n\}\) of commuting unitary operators in \(\mathcal{H}\), the cyclic subspace generated by \(\psi\) is defined to be the closed subspace in \(\mathcal {H}\) generated by the vectors \(\{\psi_k:k\in\mathbb{Z}^n\}\) with \(\psi_k\equiv T^k\psi\) and \(T^k\equiv T_{1}^{k_1}T_{2}^{k_2}\dots T_{n}^{k_n}\) for \(k=(k_1,\dots,k_n)\in\mathbb{Z}^n\). Since these vectors \(\{U(k)\psi:k\in\mathbb{Z}^n\}\) involve infinite ``linear combinations'', the problem arises of giving geometric characterizations of these nontrivial linear relations. A special case of the problem arose initially in work of Kolmogorov under the name \(L^2\)-independence. This refers to infinite linear combinations of integral translates of a fixed function with \(l^2\)-coefficients. While the authors were motivated by the study of translation operators arising in wavelet and frame theory and the results in this paper are general, the theorems of this paper are about spectral densities for general unitary operators and for stochastic integrals.