Representation and approximation of positivity preservers (Q980408)

For a closed set \(S\subseteq \mathbb R^n\) the author considers \(S\)-nonnegativity preserving linear operators \(\Phi : \mathbb{R}[X_1,\dots,X_n]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}[X_1,\dots,X_n]\) in the following sense: if \(f\geq 0\) on \(S\), then \(\Phi (f)\geq 0\) on \(S\) as well. The main result of the paper is Theorem~5.2, which states the following: an operator \(\Phi\) as above is \(S\)-nonnegativity preserving iff there exists a measure \(\mathfrak m\) on the Borel \(\sigma\)-algebra \(\mathcal B(S)\) with values in the set of nonnegative real valued and polynomially bounded functions such that \(\Phi(p)=\int_S p\, d \mathfrak m\) for all \(p\in \mathbb{R}[X_1,\dots,X_n]\). This theorem can be seen as a generalization of Haviland's Theorem [\textit{E. K. Haviland}, Am. J. Math. 58, 164--168 (1936; Zbl 0015.10901)], which concerns linear functionals on \(\mathbb R[X _{1},\dots ,X_n ]\). The paper consists of 8 sections. 1. ``Introduction'' presents a short review on the history of the subject as well as a summary of the paper. 2. ``Preliminaries and known results'' gives all the necessary definitions and also presents the most important known facts on the subject of the paper for \(S=\mathbb R^n\). Those results can be found in the articles of \textit{J. Borcea} [J. Reine Angew. Math. (to appear)], \textit{A. Guterman} and \textit{B. Shapiro} [J. Fixed Point Theory Appl. 3, No. 2, 411--429 (2008; Zbl 1160.12002)], and in the preprint of \textit{A. Guterman} and \textit{B. Shapiro} [A note on positivity preservers. Preprint (2008)]. The problem of characterizing \(\mathbb R^n\)-nonnegativity preservers is reduced to characterizing moment sequences. 3. In the section ``Examples in the general case'' the author considers some examples that help to understand which of the known results may be generalized and in which form. 4. In ``The adjoint map'' the author introduces the notion of an adjoint map, which plays a central role in the paper, and collects some properties of adjoint maps. 5. ``Integral representations of \(S\)-nonnegativity preservers'' is devoted to the main result of the paper. 6. ``Compact sets'' deals with a strengthening of the main result for the case of compact Zariski dense subsets of \(\mathbb R^n\). 7. In ``Approximation of nonnegativity preservers'', for a compact and Zariski dense subset \(S\) of \(\mathbb R^n\), a family \(\mathcal W\) of very simple nonnegativity preservers with finite dimensional range is described, such that every \(S\)-nonnegativity preserving operator can be approximated by a sequence of operators from \(\mathcal W\) with respect to the strong operator topology. 8. The last section is ``Some open problems''.