Functional Analysis 1st Take Home Assignment

Ioannis Koukoulis
November 2020

Problem 1
R1
Let H = L2 [0, 1], K = x2 0
yf (y)dy. Show that K is compact and compute its spectrum.

K is an integral operator defined by the kernel function k(x, y) = x2 y. The kernel is a square integrable function
R1R1 2 R1R1 1
in [0, 1] × [0, 1] as 0 0 |k| dxdy = 0 0 x4 y 2 dxdy = 15 < ∞ . Thus, by corollary 3.6 of the notes, operator K
is compact. From problem five of ex. sheet 3, we know that a compact operator only has point spectrum. So
it’s enough to compute the eigenvalues:
R1
Kf = λf =⇒ x2 ( 0 yf (y)dy) = λf (x).

By compactness, it is known that λ = 0 is an eigenvalue (it’s simple to find a non-trivial eigenvector as well,
R1
e.g. f = x − 32 ). In the case that λ is non-zero, and since 0 yf (y)dy ∈ C , we see that a non-trivial eigenvector
f must take the form f (x) = Cx2 , C 6= 0.
Substituting back, we have:
R1
x2 C 0 y 3 dy = λCx2 =⇒ λ = 14 . Therefore, the spectrum of the operator is σ(K) = {0, 41 }.

Problem 2
Let U ∈ B(H) be a unitary operator. Prove σ(U ) is contained in the unit circle. Let S : l2 (Z → l2 (Z be the
bilateral shift, i.e. the map defined by Sen = en+1 . Prove that S is unitary and compute its spectrum.

The spectrum
consists of the values λ for which the operator U − λId fails to be invertible. For |λ| > 1, we can
P∞
say λ < 1, and by lemma 4.7 of the lecture notes T = Id− Uλ is invertible, its inverse being T −1 = k=0 ( Uλ )k .
U

From this, we can see that −λT = (U − λId) is invertible.

Similarly, if |λ| < 1 we can look at λU ∗ . We know that U U ∗ = U ∗ U = Id and kU ∗ k = 1. Using the same
argument as above, we see that R = Id − λU ∗ is invertible. Applying U to both sides gives U R = U − λId, an
operator that is invertible, since (U R)−1 = R−1 U ∗ .
We have thus shown that for a unitary operator U , if |λ| =
6 1, U − λId cannot fail to be invertible, and thus
the spectrum σ(U ) can only be a subset of the unit circle.

Turning to the bilateral shift operator S, it is evident that the orthonormal basis en of vectors (where only one
element equals 1, and all the others are equal to 0) is bijectively mapped to itself. Therefore, by using the result
at the end of lecture 2, we can conclude it is an isometry. It is also quite straightforward to see how this is a
norm-preserving injective, onto operator by noticing how elements of the sequences are simply shifted.
We want to compute the spectrum of this operator. From the above result, we can see that it is going to be
a subset of the unit cycle.
Pk−1Considering a potential element of the spectrum λ, we can make up a sequence of
unit vectors ξn := √1n k=0 λ̄k ek = √1n [...0, 1, λ̄, ... , λ̄n−2 , λ̄n−1 , 0, 0, ...]. For those unit vectors, we have

(S − λId)ξn 2 = 1 (−λe0 + λ̄n−1 en ) 2 = 2 , by the Pythagorean theorem, and the fact that λλ̄ = 1. We

n n
see that the norm of this vector tends to zero, and this construction holds for any λ where |λ| = 1, so by using
lemma 4.3 of the lecture notes we can conclude that the spectrum of S is exactly the unit circle.

Problem 3
Let T = T ∗ ∈ B(H), with kT k = 1 and T ≥ 0. Prove that for any v ∈ H, limn→∞ T n v = Pv , where P v is the
orthogonal projection onto ker(Id − T ).

1
The operator T − 0 = T is positive, and its spectrum is a closed subset of [0, ∞) as per corollary 4.14 of the
lecture notes. Combining this with proposition 4.9, i.e. spectrum of a bounded self-adjoint operator is closed
subset of [−kT k ,kT k], we can see σ(T ) ⊂ [0, 1]. In fact σ(T ) can be written as [κ, 1], 0 ≤ κ < 1, since we now
know 1 is contained in the operator’s spectrum.
We now consider the sequence of bounded Borel functions fn (t) = tn , fn : σ(T ) → C. It is clear that
the sequence converges boundedly pointwise to the indicator function 1{1} (t). We can then make use of Borel
functional calculus and claim that correspondingly, limn→∞ T n → 1{1} (T ).
However, in problem 2 of ex. sheet 5 we proved that an operator of the form 1{λ} (T ) is an orthogonal
projection onto the eigenspace of λ. Therefore, for all v ∈ H, limn→∞ T n v = 1{1} (T )v = P v. The same
argument works even in the case where 1 is not an eigenvalue, where limn→∞ T n v would just be a projection
onto 0.

Problem 4
Let K ⊂ H be Hilbert spaces. Prove that for any bounded linear map T : K → X,where X is a normed space
there exists an extension Te : H → X such that kT k = kTek. Find an example of a pair of normed spaces Y ⊂ X,
a two-dimensional normed space Z and a bounded linear map S : Y → Z such that any extension Se : X → Z
satisfies kSk
e > kSk .

For the first part we can argue that, since both K and H are Hilbert, K is closed and an orthogonal projection P
from H onto K is well defined. Then the extension Te = T P x will have the same norm as T , since kP xk ≤ kxk.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to find an example for the second part of the exercise, even with the
provided hints. The intuition was that somehow the subspace Y would be such that it should not admit a
projection, or maybe the projection would not be continuous, so the construction mentioned above would not
work. Somehow, the fact that this can actually be done with finite dimensional spaces made the search even
more frustrating. Thus, this first assignment ends on a bitter note.