An algebra of bounded operators on a Hilbert space H is said to be reductive if it is unital, weakly closed and has the property that if M ⊂ H is a (closed) subspace invariant for every operator in , then so is M⊥. Loginov and Šul'man [6] and Rosenthal [9] proved that if is an abelian reductive algebra which commutes with a compact operator K having a dense range, then is a von Neumann algebra. Note that in this case every invariant subspace of is spanned by one-dimensional invariant subspaces. Indeed, the operator KK* commutes with . Hence its eigenspaces are invariant for , so that H is an orthogonal sum of the finite-dimensional invariant subspaces of From this our claim easily follows.
Operators in the commutant of a reductive algebra
