ArticleOriginal scientific text

Title

Commutativity of compact selfadjoint operators

Authors 1, 2

Affiliations

  1. IMMD IX, Universität Erlangen, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
  2. School of Mathematics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia

Abstract

The relationship between the joint spectrum γ(A) of an n-tuple A=(A1,...,An) of selfadjoint operators and the support of the corresponding Weyl calculus T(A) : f ↦ f(A) is discussed. It is shown that one always has γ(A) ⊂ supp (T(A)). Moreover, when the operators are compact, equality occurs if and only if the operators Aj mutually commute. In the non-commuting case the equality fails badly: While γ(A) is countable, supp(T(A)) has to be an uncountable set. An example is given showing that, for non-compact operators, coincidence of γ(A) and supp (T(A)) no longer implies commutativity of the set {Ai} .

Bibliography

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Pages:
109-125
Main language of publication
English
Received
1992-08-13
Accepted
1994-06-21
Published
1995
Exact and natural sciences