The spectrum of orthogonal sums of subnormal pairs

This note provides yet another example of the difficulties that arise when one wants to extend the spectral theory of subnormal operators to subnormal tuples. Several basic properties of a subnormal operator Y remain true for tuples; e.g. the existence and uniqueness of its minimal normal extension N, the spectral inclusion σ(N)⊂ σ(Y)-proved for n-tuples in [4] and generalized to infinite tuples in [5]. However, neither the invariant subspace theorem nor the spectral mapping theorem in the “strong form” as in [3] is known so far for subnormal tuples.

Spectral Inclusion and C.N.E.

1. An n-tuple S = (S1, …, Sn) of commuting bounded linear operators on a Hilbert space H is said to have commuting normal extension if and only if there exists an n-tuple N = (N1, …, Nn) of commuting normal operators on some larger Hilbert space K ⊃ H with the restrictions Ni|H = Si, i = 1, …, n. If we takethe minimal reducing subspace of N containing H, then N is unique up to unitary equivalence and is called the c.n.e. of S. (Here J denotes the multi-index (j1, …, jn) of nonnegative integers and N*J = N1*jl … Nn*jn and we emphasize that c.n.e. denotes minimal commuting normal extension.) If n = 1, then S1 = S is called subnormal and N1 = N its minimal normal extension (m.n.e.).

Lifting the Commutant of a Subnormal Operator

Let S be a subnormal operator on a Hilbert space ℋ and let N be its minimal normal extension on the Hilbert space ℋ. (We refer the reader to [5, 15] for the basic material on subnormal operators.) Denote the commutant and double commutant of an operator T by ﹛T﹜’ and ﹛T﹜”, respectively.